Study: Taxpayer-Backed NBA Arenas Don’t Help Local Economies
Over the last few decades, sports franchise owners have been hugely successful in convincing governments to give them money in the form of taxpayer-funded stadiums and arenas. A favored approach is to threaten to pull up stakes and move a team, and its attendant economic benefits, to another city.
Though taxpayers are often left holding the bag for these new facilities, the ploy works time and again. It seems not many politicians want to be blamed for sending a beloved (or even not so beloved) team packing.
Erica C. Barnett at Network site PubliCola writes that a new study from George Washington University finds that professional basketball arenas, like one now proposed for Seattle (which recently lost its NBA team to Oklahoma City), are of questionable economic value to the public.
The study -- which looked exclusively at basketball-only and basketball-hockey multipurpose arenas -- found “no statistically significant association between having an NBA arena or an NBA franchise” and city residents’ personal income, a standard indicator of economic growth.
In particular, cities with sports other than basketball (like Seattle, which has soccer, pro football, college football, women’s basketball, and baseball teams, and could get a hockey team under the proposed arena deal) were unlikely to benefit economically from new basketball arenas.
Even in cases where basketball arenas do correspond with higher regional incomes, public tax subsidies for arenas tend to erase those gains. And the more recently an arena was built, the worse its economic impact is on the population.
Also on the Network today: Let's Go Ride A Bike wants to hear about your bike-share experiences; Second Avenue Sagas looks forward to not missing the New York MTA MetroCard; and BikingInLA shares a harrowing story of traffic justice denied.
Stay in touch
Sign up for our free newsletter
More from Streetsblog USA
Talking Headways Podcast: Beyond Greenways
This week we’re joined by Bob Searns to talk about his new book and grand ideas for walking trails that circle whole regions and more local routes that make up a new mode of green infrastructure in cities.
Thursday’s Headlines Are Inside Out
Cars and trucks are getting safer for drivers and passengers, but people outside the vehicles are increasingly in danger.
New Federal Committee Will Push for Transportation Equity By Helping DOT Reckon With Its Past
“No one alive today is necessarily responsible for the origins of the [transportation] inequities that we inherited. But everybody who was alive today and in a position of responsibility, is accountable for what we do about it. That's why we're here.”
Report: America’s Historic Bike Boom is Flatlining
"This growth won't continue forever without being facilitated by more infrastructure investment, [and particularly] safety infrastructure."
SF Advocates Explore How Enhancing Disability Access on Transit Helps for Everyone
BART was the first accessible transit system in the country. Advocates want Bay Area transit agencies to do better at keeping buses and trains accessible for all.
