Pay To Play: Do Publicly Financed Stadiums Make Economic Sense

Nov 7, 2015; Los Angeles, CA, USA; General view of fireworks during the playing of the national anthem at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum before the NCAA football game between the Arizona Wildcats and the Southern California Trojans. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

In 1923, the first publicly financed stadium in America opened.  The stadium is highly regarded as one of the greatest ever built in the United States and is ironically located in Los Angeles, California.  The Los Angeles Coliseum was originally built as a multipurpose arena, that to date has hosted fifteen different tenants, the longest of which is the USC Trojans, and is the only stadium to host multiple Olympic Summer Games (Coliseum History, 2014).

In the ninety years following the completion of the Los Angeles Coliseum, approximately 186 sports stadiums have been completed in America.  In total, tax payers have footed nearly $33 billion of the construction costs.  When all is said and done, that is estimated to be 61% of the total cost to build these sporting playgrounds (Animated Infographic, 2012).  Though taxpayer money has been used for the purpose of building sporting arenas since the early 1920’s, the 1990’s until present has seen an absolute explosion in the use of taxpayer money for the use of these sporting complexes.

From 1997-2015, eighteen new NFL stadiums have been built and two have had extensive rehabilitation.  Only one of these stadiums used no public financing, that being MetLife Stadium, the home of the New York Jets and New York Giants.  Even though this stadium did not use direct tax payer money, the tax credits used to fund it has cost New York City millions.  Tampa Bay was so desperate to keep their team, they gave into the Buccaneers extortion tactics and paid the entire $194 million bill to build Raymond James Stadium.  In total, since 1997, the taxpayers of seventeen different cities have paid a total rapidly approaching $4 billion.  All of this money has been spent simply to say they are an NFL City (NFL Stadium Funding, 2011).

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