It’s an interesting discussion to have, but I agree it is probably dead on arrival. I’m sure the Jerry Jones’s of the world have lots of friends in congress.
3 Likes
Agreed - Would love to see the end of cities competing with each other to give tax handouts to billionaire sports owners. But I give it zero chance to pass.
3 Likes
There has to be a happy medium between situations such as Atlanta which discard venues after only 20 or so years and cases such as Richmond where the city can’t get a new arena or minor league baseball stadium built when the former was forced to close and the latter is somewhat obsolete.
Granted that the independent city structure plays a huge role, but Virginia’s ban on state funding of sports facilities causes a whole other set of issues. Now just watch Ralph Youngkin get that repealed to get Dan Snyder across the Potomac to a dome in Loudoun or Prince William Counties.
9 Likes
The issue here is the argument of subsidizing sports stadium with tax dollars due to increased economic activity is just flawed. The traditional argument is a sports stadium creates construction jobs, increase local business revenue surrounding it, and in the long term create more economic growth during games, etc. But that’s the wrong way of looking at this. The city can only get economic growth in 2 ways, 1) increase productivity of the local economic output, or 2) the net export is greater than what you spent.
-
is circular logic in the context of local taxpayer funded stadium construction. You are taking tax revenue out of the local economy to fund a stadium in hopes of more tax revenue from the local economy (mostly with the same tax payer base). Rarely is one higher than the other if at all.
-
is the nuance here. There are cities where a sports stadium will draw enough outside the area revenue to make a difference. Las Vegas comes to mind as potentially being able to draw enough outside the area tax dollars to make it a net positive on the city for a stadium. But these examples are far fewer. Raleigh is definitely not one of these. Neither is Richmond. Atlanta is an interesting case, but if i were to guess also don’t draw enough outside the area revenue to make the math work out.
9 Likes
Here’s a really excellent and thorough discussion of what this bill would do, and would not do. Even if it does pass, which is rather unlikely, it wouldn’t prevent local governments from directly subsidizing stadiums. It would simply end preferential tax treatment for people who hold the municipal bonds on their debts, a tax break which effectively pushes a small part of the cost of such projects onto federal taxpayers. The bill would raise the costs of such projects slightly, but it wouldn’t be a fundament change. Even so, past efforts to close the loophole have made some headway–a version of this actually passed the U.S. House in 2017 but was removed by the Senate–but have always gotten tripped up somewhere.
3 Likes
Agree that the current economic argument is flawed when it focuses exclusively on tax revenue. But disagree that it isn’t helpful economically.
-
If you get more dollars spent on local activities (versus travel, savings, or on non-local business - Amazon) the multiplier effect takes hold and those dollars are recycled throughout the local economy. The same dollar can show up on dozens of business’ balance sheets over the course of a year.
-
At some point in the growth of a “big” city, both the residents, existing businesses, and potential future businesses expect a certain level of “big city” amenities. Professional sports is one of those amenities that residents want and improves their quality of life.
It is ok for local governments to spend money on sports stadiums if they are increasing local economic activity and improving their residents’ quality of life, even if it’s not a revenue boost for the government itself. We don’t expect public parks or libraries to bring in tax dollars. Improving the local economy and their residents’ lives is the job of our local leaders!
5 Likes
Yes, so there are externality benefits for having a stadium much like libraries and parks as you described as part of 2. And if the argument is we need a stadium to generate those types of amenities for the citizens and a city is willing to use tax breaks to achieve it. So be it. That’s different from arguing that you will see economic returns from the tax beneficial public financing you are providing. But there most definitely is an intangible benefit here with a stadium.
But on the multiplier effect. Multiple studies have shown that the effect is actually zero to non-existent. It’s not surprising as the multiplier effect does not factor in opportunity cost of the dollars spent. The revenue generated from the stadium basically comes from 2 major sources. 1) jobs creation and 2) spending by people going to games and surrounding local businesses. The job creation part is suspect as the construction jobs are temporary, so it only provides a limited multiplier effect. The long term stadium jobs are either low paying, or to the players who don’t live here in the offseason. Basically, it’s not comparable to the job creation of attracting an outside corporate campus (like Apple) with tax breaks. While spending by people on local restaurants / businesses during games will create a multiplier effect, it’s offset by the fact that people will be spending money going out to restaurants anyways if the stadium isn’t there. It’s still disposable income. You may shift a bit more toward the local economy vs outside, but not by as much as everyone thinks. It’s not creating meaningful gains on productivity.
1 Like
With Raleigh hosting to many major events (13 collegiate tournaments, Stadium Series, 2027 WUG Bid), do any of you think it’s possible to secure the Olympics in 2036 if a bid was submitted? The IOC has said they want upcoming cities to already have a large number of the facilities needed (Brisbane 2032 has 86%) and the Research Triangle Region has a bunch of these. The main goal by shifting toward this is because the IOC doesn’t want cities bankrupting themselves to host. Meanwhile, the Research Triangle could host across 4 different cities helping with cost. Before people say “the triangle doesn’t have enough people,” Brisbane has an extremely similar population but the Raleigh area is one of the fastest growing in the US. Thoughts?
I think mass transit (in a major way) would need to be implemented by then; also, with LA hosting in 2028, the US would probably not be picked again that soon. Unless there aren’t many bids for the games.
Yeah LA has a lot of metros, light rail, and commuter rail. They did a wonderful job maintaining their status as a car city and a transit town at the same time. Raleigh will need another transit bond WITH LIGHT RAIL to get something like that.
I believe there are plans for the new RUSBUS facility to open in 2026. 10 year gap before games which can allow for growth and delays. They had released a map of potential routes with the new facility. Can imagine a bunch of expansion at GoDurham and Chapel Hill Transit too. Wolfline could possibly be used for additional routes?
2 Likes
Basically, no.
Brisbane is one of only a few big cities in Australia, has stunning beaches, and a reputation and infrastructure as a fun tourist area along with its nearby sister city Gold Coast.
We’d have to compete with every other American city just to get the bid, and we simply don’t have the cachet, corporate muscle, existing infrastructure, or unique selling points.
We actually have more than you’d think. Due to the local universities and list of several municipalities, we have 3-4x the number of facilities as others that have submitted a bid including Boston (plus many that have hosted). The area has more than 250 companies at RTP and has more than enough corporate structure. For the IOC, the unique selling point would be the sustainability post-Olympics. Any new facilities could be occupied by the local universities
Modern day Olympics are a money loosing operation by a long shot for just about every host city these days. Despite the revenue they generate, there is a huge expense to build tons of venues and infrastructure that will be used for 2 weeks and then never again (for the most part).
I vote no on that one. I love watching the Olympics, not paying for 2 weeks of it with taxes, and straining the city for decades.
8 Likes
As much as the idea of us hosting the Olympics seems cool, I don’t want our region to be stuck with overly expensive and oversized venues that are hard to reuse -especially if the specs of those developments dictated by the IOC’s unnecessary extravagance, and the logistics will be controlled by NBC’s whims (surely this is common sense by now and I don’t need to cite it, right…). I’m supportive of the Olympic movement, but not the cronyism behind it -and I especially don’t want the Triangle to become yet another victim.
You might want to take a look at the thread about our bid for the World University Games in 2027, which might give you a nearer-term look at how we’d stack up. There’s also a whole section for threads on transit and transportation where we’re talking about RUSbus, upcoming BRT and rail projects, and the limitations of them all (mainly due to lack of money and local risk aversion).
8 Likes
It really depends on the city. We’ve been fortunate to have a large variety of facilities and not much will need to be added. It’s possible a baseball stadium would need to be built, but they’d only need to have 20,000 seats, which means one of the local MILB teams could utilize the venue. Possibly as a replacement for the Durham Bulls Athletic Park. It’s quite likely they may want to build a new football/soccer stadium for the opening ceremony. However, there is already plans for a 22,000-seat stadium where plans can be modified to host a larger 60,000+ Which could also allow for NC State, NCFC and NC Courage to have themselves a new home. An Olympic village will need to be built, but I’m assuming the area will still need offices and houses at that time as well.
2 Likes
A lot of the time, they do cause money loss, but in an area that is already highly saturated in venues, less money would need to be spent, and would be spent across several cities preventing loss. There’s also tourism, which unlike other cities, Raleigh does not naturally attract a lot of, which would only create revenue for the cities with more than 1 million tourists that otherwise wouldn’t be there.
Well, Atlanta doing okay and isn’t in debit from 96. I can’t ay that for other cities in other countries. But Centennial Olympic Park is now a full-time tourist destination.
I think this fear you have is because other countries with poorer economies are suffering after having it but remember the US has the strongest economy in the world, I bet LA in 2028 when they have the Summer Olympics with not be in debt after these Olympics they will thrive with more events at the LA Coliseum will still be in use after that still hosting annual college bowl games, and Sofi Stadium they can easily put a track there then go back to NFL games. I think you are afraid of economics because of other countries particularly Latin America because they have weak, poor, and corrupt governments and weak economies, But it isn’t all foreign cities Paris and Sydney have done fine since their games.
1 Like
We don’t have close to the number and quality of venues needed for olympics. If there are any, that’s also 14 years out so they will probably need substantial renovations by then. Move the durham bulls from their perfect location?? Just triple the size of the already questionable NC Courage stadium??
It was fun when the Atlanta area had it but we are no where close to what they had then.
The olympics could be cool here, but better to be upfront about it: almost everything would have to be built. $$$
7 Likes
That’s why every city that hosts; olympics some more than once, Is in my opinion sort of the gold standard in pro-sports hosting and just major events hosting.