The Unfortunate (and Reluctant) Argument in Favor of Appeasing Sports Owners and Keeping Teams in the Cities to Which They Belong

What I Would Not Do

The dream of being rich is one many people have—often people dream about spending the lottery winnings as they are buying that $2 ticket at the gas station, or thinking about what they would do if they were Jeff Bezos or Warren Buffett—I am no different. I don’t know what I would do explicitly, but I know what I would not do. I would not buy a sports team that I am not a fan of, in a city that I do not care about, and then try to get as many tax breaks as possible from that city’s government while running the team like a profit-generating business. That is what I would not do.

Sports are the literal lifeline to emotions for a lot of people in our society. My happiest moments are because of sports—

—as well as my saddest—

I am not different from many others in society, except—to brag a little bit—I am spoiled with the success of being a fan of the greatest sports city in the world and with generally good owners that have been rather good stewards of the teams they have owned since I have been on this earth. They are far from perfect, but they at least have invested in the teams they own and have made efforts to win.

For Kraft, he privately financed Gillette Stadium and is a legitimate fan of the Patriots and saved them from moving to St. Louis in 1994. For Henry, he has had a bumpy half decade—let’s not talk too much about the Mookie Betts trade, or the Chris Sale trade, or the Rafael Devers trade—but it looks like finally in 2026 it’s all systems go again and they are looking to compete for a championship this year—I typed that last part with my index finger while knocking on wood; and to be fair they are the most successful baseball franchise since 2000 and broke the Curse of the Bambino in 2004, which has resulted in no less than 248 documentaries on the matter. For the Bruins, they have been owned by the Jacobs family since 1975 and have constantly been one of the most successful franchises. For the Celtics, the jury is still out on Bill Chisholm who just bought the team, but he seems to be carrying on the spending and care that Wyc and Irving Grousbeck gave to the team when they bought them in 2002. They were such great stewards and brought them two championships and a constant stream of contention. Real fans that actually cared, only selling to estate plan because the elder Grousbeck is now in his 90s.

It’s rare to have that. My biggest annoyance from an ownership perspective is that John Henry mysteriously stopped spending like a big-market team after the 2018 World Series championship. Most believe this is due to the increase in focus on Liverpool—another subsidiary of Fenway Sports Group—but I’m not going to dwell on the past; we are looking towards 2026. The overall point though is, I have never had to worry about losing my team to another city or an owner holding the city hostage to pass a blank check for them to do the bare minimum in maintenance.

We see right now all around the country—from Oakland to Chicago, from Kansas City to Kansas City (you read that right), from Las Vegas to Atlanta—cities either being forced to give in to demands or risk losing their team to a city that will. These handouts have some real benefits to communities. Some jobs are made, some economic production is produced. But overall there is not any evidence that points to cities and states funding the infrastructure of these buildings but not getting the profits of them being sensible or profitable. It is simply to keep citizens happy.

Don’t get me wrong. If you put on a ballot anywhere I live “would you vote to bring a team here if it requires X amount of tax dollars being diverted from program X to program Y,” I would vote yes. Or if there was a ballot initiative that said an owner needs so-and-so money for so-and-so project to enhance or rebuild the stadium, I would also probably vote yes. I, like many others that vote, do have some selfishness in my decision-making. Sports are one of the main reasons my girlfriend and I are moving to Boston, and while none of those teams are at risk to leave, there is a legitimate chance the Chicago Bears can be playing their home games in Hammond, Indiana. I am a resident Buffalo Bills hater, but imagining them playing anywhere other than Orchard Park, New York is wacky to me—that’s why Erie County and New York State gave them $850 million to partially fund a roughly $1.5 billion new stadium opening this year. For teams like the Raiders and the Athletics of Oakland, they didn’t have similar fates. One is in Vegas, partially publicly financed via a hotel room tax tourists paid ranging from 0.88% to 1%, paying for about half the stadium, while the A’s hope to join them sometime soon but are currently playing in Sacramento in a Triple-A stadium with the capacity of 14,000. The Warriors also left Oakland but across the bay to San Francisco in a 100% privately funded deal by Warriors owner Joe Lacob and company—and he should get a pat on the back for this—as it is maybe the last time we see an owner go at it 100% alone in our society.

We should be upset by this and I believe we are. Everyone knows these owners can pay for it themselves, but why would they when they could get free money from the government for these projects? The action of moving would make a lot of these local elected politicians pariahs in some of these cities, and so they would rather give them money with few if any strings attached than risk being the mayor or elected body that was there when their beloved football or basketball team left the city. Greg Nickels could have kept the Sonics in Seattle, but instead negotiated on behalf of the city to take the money for them to move—an unbelievable and unforgivable sin that at least does look to have some redemption, as the Sonics may be making a return since the NBA will be voting on expansion this offseason.

This is something that likely requires national attention, and with all the other things in the spotlight, it is something that unfortunately gets very little. Here is some of that very little.

What the Economists Say (and Why They’re Right About the Numbers)

I am not an economist. But economists have been studying this question since the early 1990s, and their results are about as close to a unanimous verdict as economics ever gets. In a 2005 survey of American Economic Association members, 85 percent agreed that state and local governments should eliminate subsidies to professional sports franchises. In 2017, a University of Chicago economics panel found basically the same thing—80 percent agreed that stadium subsidies cost taxpayers more than the local economic benefits they generate.

The foundational work comes from Roger Noll and Andrew Zimbalist at the Brookings Institution. Their argument is actually pretty simple once you hear it: stadiums do not generate net new economic activity. They redistribute existing entertainment spending. The family that goes to a baseball game on Saturday night is not creating new money for the local economy. They are spending the money they would have spent at a restaurant, a movie theater, a concert, or a bar. The dollars move from one entertainment category to another. The stadium doesn’t create wealth. It rearranges it.

John Charles Bradbury, Dennis Coates, and Brad Humphreys—the three economists who have probably published more on this topic than anyone alive—have been saying this for decades. In a 2023 paper in the Journal of Economic Surveys, they put it plainly: the level of publicly financed venue subsidies typically provided far exceeds any observed economic benefits. And in a 2026 Economic Development Quarterly paper, Bradbury and Humphreys went even further, saying the research is so one-sided at this point that it is on subsidy proponents to prove that any stadium proposal makes financial sense.

Victor Matheson at the College of the Holy Cross explains it as the “substitution effect.” When a new stadium opens, the spending that fills it is pulled from other forms of local entertainment. The net effect on the city’s economy is close to zero. And the jobs? Overwhelmingly low-wage, part-time, and seasonal. Ushers, concession workers, parking attendants. Nobody is buying a house on what they make working the nachos stand at Allegiant Stadium.

So the economists are right—on the numbers, the return on investment is not there, the jobs don’t materialize the way the consulting firms promise, and the “economic impact” studies commissioned by the teams are basically marketing documents that produce big numbers the real world never matches. The numbers don’t work. I still think you should pay! Here’s why.

The Parade of Absurdity

Before I make the case for why cities should pay, let me show you what happens when they don’t. Or when they can’t. Or when the owner was never going to stay regardless.

Seattle SuperSonics → Oklahoma City Thunder

This one is personal for me, so I’m going to try to be as measured as I can. I’m going to fail, but I’m going to try.

On July 18, 2006, Howard Schultz—longtime CEO of Starbucks, and new-time resident of Miami, Florida—sold the Seattle SuperSonics for $350 million to an investment group led by Clay Bennett, an Oklahoma City businessman. The condition of the sale was that Bennett’s group would make a “good-faith effort” to keep the team in Seattle. In February 2007, Bennett proposed a $500 million publicly funded arena in Renton. The Washington State legislature said no thanks. Bennett gave up by April. Good-faith effort over, apparently.

Then the emails came out. Seattle’s lawsuit against Bennett’s group produced internal communications that suggested at least some members of the ownership group intended to move the team before they even bought it. Aubrey McClendon, one of Bennett’s minority partners, told an Oklahoma City newspaper in August 2007 that the group had purchased the team with the intention of bringing it to Oklahoma City. The NBA fined him $250,000 for saying it out loud. Bennett denied everything. The emails said otherwise.

On April 18, 2008, NBA owners approved the relocation 28–2. Only Paul Allen and Mark Cuban voted against it. The city of Seattle settled for $45 million to break the KeyArena lease, with an additional $30 million conditional payment that was never triggered. A 41-year-old franchise—the team of Gary Payton, Shawn Kemp, the 1979 championship—gone for the cost of a mid-tier power forward’s contract.

Howard Schultz said in 2019 that the sale was one of the biggest regrets of his professional life. Great. Wonderful. The NBA is now reportedly considering expanding back into Seattle. If they do, the city will be asked to build a new arena—for the privilege of getting back what was taken from it.

St. Louis Rams → Los Angeles

In 1995, St. Louis built the Edward Jones Dome for approximately $280 million in public money to lure the Rams from Anaheim. The lease included a “first tier” clause requiring the dome to remain in the top 25 percent of NFL stadiums or the team could break the lease. The city built the stadium, and the lease said if the city didn’t keep spending money to keep it nice enough, the team could leave. Which is exactly what happened. Stan Kroenke—net worth exceeding $12 billion—moved the team to Los Angeles in 2016. The city and the state of Missouri sued and eventually settled for $790 million. St. Louis built a stadium, lost the team, and got a settlement that didn’t even cover what it had spent.

Oakland: The City That Lost Everything

Oakland is the cautionary tale. The Raiders left for Las Vegas. The Warriors moved across the bay to San Francisco. The A’s left for Sacramento—a historic Major League franchise now playing in a 14,000-seat minor league ballpark while waiting for a new stadium in Las Vegas that Nevada taxpayers are kicking in $380 million toward. Oakland went from a three-sport city to a zero-sport city in less than a decade.

The Warriors are actually the interesting case here. Chase Center in San Francisco was privately financed at a cost of roughly $1.4 billion by Joe Lacob and company. They left Oakland for a nicer building in a richer city, and yeah, that stings if you’re an Oakland fan. But at least they paid for it themselves.

Kansas City Chiefs → Kansas

In April 2024, Jackson County, Missouri, voters rejected a 3/8th-cent sales tax extension that would have funded renovations to Arrowhead Stadium. Nearly 60 percent voted no. Kansas immediately stepped in. On December 22, 2025, Kansas legislators voted unanimously to issue STAR bonds financing a $3.3 billion project: a domed stadium, an entertainment district, new headquarters, and a training facility. The public-private split? Sixty percent public. Forty percent private. On a $3.3 billion project.

The Chicago Bears, Maybe in Indiana

This one is still unfolding and I don’t have enough detail yet to give it the treatment the other cases got, but the outline alone tells you everything about where this is headed. The Bears are one of the NFL’s founding franchises—a charter member of the league since 1920, founded by George Halas in Decatur, Illinois. They explored a new stadium in Arlington Heights, that fell apart, Indiana started making overtures, and Illinois legislators scrambled to put together competing subsidy proposals. The fact that a century-old franchise might leave the state because Springfield can’t match Indianapolis’s offer is the Kansas City playbook playing out in real time, and it will keep happening until someone changes the rules. If Chicago had demanded equity when Soldier Field was renovated with public money, the city would own the building and the Bears couldn’t use relocation as leverage to extract a bigger check from a neighboring state.

The Ones We Tore Down

Not every loss is a relocation. Sometimes we tear down the places where the history happened and replace them with something shinier that the public helped pay for. Old Yankee Stadium—the original House That Ruth Built, the place where Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, and Mickey Mantle played—was demolished in 2010, replaced by a parking lot for the new stadium next door

The building that was financed with $1.2 billion in tax-exempt bonds. The federal tax subsidy on those bonds means taxpayers across the country helped fund a building whose revenue goes entirely to the Steinbrenner family. If New York had demanded equity when it facilitated $1.2 billion in tax-exempt financing, the city would own the new stadium and could negotiate terms that actually reflect the public’s investment.

The Warriors left Oracle Arena in Oakland for Chase Center in San Francisco—and to their credit, they paid for the new building themselves. The building is still there—now called Oakland Arena, hosting concerts and events—but a concert venue is not the same thing as a home. The Warriors’ championship banners still hang from the rafters while Ariana Grande plays below them. That’s the thing about stadiums: they are not just buildings. They are containers for decades of shared experience, and when the team leaves or the building comes down, all that history becomes just that—history.

What Losing a Team Actually Means

Here is where the economists lose me. They are right that stadium subsidies do not generate a positive return on investment, they are right that the jobs are mostly part-time, and they are right that the economic impact studies are commissioned by the teams and are basically marketing documents. All of that is correct, and it completely misses the point.

When someone’s favorite team is the Steelers, it just makes sense. Pittsburgh and the Steelers are the same thing. You can’t separate them. Same for about 75 percent of the NFL. The team and the city are one thing. Green Bay is the Packers. Dallas is the Cowboys. New England is the Patriots. That is more than just an economic relationship; it’s a legitimate cultural and regional identity that molds a person.

And then there are the masochists. The Browns fans, the Jets fans, the Bills fans, the Lions fans, the Vikings fans. There is a great episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm where Larry’s friend couldn’t stand the Jets anymore and had to end it all. Outside of New York City—and the Jets don’t even play in New York City, for what it’s worth—and maybe the Vikings, all those cities are gritty. They don’t expect to ever win and it makes sense why those teams are there. When Cleveland does well, it just means more than when Chicago does well—besides when the Cubs won after over 100 years, but as a betting man I’d wager the Browns are going to near that streak.

Think about the rivalries that define cities. Jets and Giants fans in the same office. White Sox and Cubs on the same block. Lakers and the ugly sister Clippers. Baltimore teams versus D.C. teams. The Bay Area, which has now lost its other half completely. Those rivalries are not only entertainment products, but part of the fabric of families and help people understand where they live and who they are. Maybe it’s the romantic in me that feels this way, and not everyone cares about sports like I do, but I think this does matter.

The Golden State Warriors were the truth, but they left Oakland for the San Francisco side of the bridge. The other two Oakland teams have left entirely. Oakland has lost the identity of a rich sports culture that has so much history, but now that’s all it is—history. In 20, 30, 40 years we will look back and say “remember the A’s? Remember Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco and Rollie Fingers? Remember Jon Gruden!!!” And it will be the way we talk about the original Baltimore Colts.

Losing a team is losing a fabric of you as a person. It may be irrational, but that’s what being a fan of sports is. Complete and utter irrationality. It’s what makes it beautiful. It’s what makes it the greatest thing in the world.

We throw money at everything—at wars, at corporate bailouts, at tax breaks for industries that don’t need them—and this is something that actually builds community and pride and the kind of shared experience that makes a city feel like a city. The economics of buying a $15 beer at a baseball game don’t pencil out either, and we do it because it’s part of being alive. It’s part of the ride baby!

The case for keeping your team is obvious to anyone who has ever cared about one. The case for how cities are paying to keep them is less obvious and a lot uglier.

Follow the Money

If I just argued that cities should fund stadiums, here’s how the deals actually work—because part of what makes this conversation so frustrating is that the financing mechanisms are designed to be confusing. Most people don’t know how municipal bonds work, and that’s the point.

Municipal bonds. The city borrows money by issuing bonds to investors. Often these bonds are tax-exempt, which means the federal government is effectively subsidizing the borrowing—so federal taxpayers in all fifty states are helping pay for a stadium they will never visit. New Yankee Stadium was financed with approximately $1.2 billion in tax-exempt bonds. You, reading this from wherever you live, helped pay for that.

Hotel and tourism taxes. A surcharge gets added to hotel rooms in the stadium’s metro area. Politicians love this one because they can say “tourists pay, not residents.” Except tourism tax revenue is still public money that could go elsewhere. Nevada’s Allegiant Stadium was funded with $750 million from a 0.88% room tax in Clark County. Including bond interest, the actual tab is closer to $1.35 billion. That tax doesn’t expire until 2048.

STAR bonds and TIF districts. These are the sneakiest tools in the toolbox. Tax Increment Financing takes a geographic area and redirects future increases in tax revenue from that area to pay off stadium bonds—money that would otherwise flow to schools, fire departments, and city services. Kansas’s STAR bonds work the same way. When Kansas approved STAR bonds for the Chiefs’ new complex in December 2025, it pledged thirty years of future tax revenue to Clark Hunt’s football palace. They can say “no new taxes,” and technically they’re right. They’re just taking existing taxes and giving them to a billionaire instead of funding the things those taxes were supposed to fund.

Personal seat licenses (PSLs). A fee—often thousands of dollars—for the right to buy tickets. Not the tickets themselves. The right to buy them. Your grandfather didn’t pay $5,000 for the privilege of buying season tickets.

Look at that table. The two privately financed stadiums are right there at the bottom—Kraft built Gillette for $325 million, Lacob built Chase Center for $1.4 billion, and both franchises are doing just fine with full stadiums and profitable operations. Granted, San Francisco is a lot more expensive than Foxborough, and construction costs have exploded since Kraft built Gillette in the late 1990s—what cost $325 million then would cost well over a billion today. But the principle holds: it is possible for owners to build their own buildings. They just don’t have to, so they don’t.

The problem is not that cities spend money on stadiums—I just told you I think they should. The problem is that the terms are insane. In every one of those publicly funded deals, the city or state put up hundreds of millions or billions of dollars and received no equity in the asset it built. Nevada doesn’t own Allegiant Stadium. Kansas won’t own the Chiefs’ new stadium. New York doesn’t own Highmark Stadium. The public pays for the building, gets no ownership stake, collects no revenue share, and has zero leverage when the lease expires. If these were normal business transactions—if a venture capital firm put up 60 percent of the money for a project and got 0 percent of the equity—the partners would be fired for malpractice. But in stadium financing, this is the standard deal.

What Cities Should Demand Instead

I just spent several thousand words arguing that cities should fund stadiums. Now let me argue that they should get a much, much better deal when they do.

Demand Equity

The simplest version: the city funds the stadium, the city owns the stadium. The team leases it. Maybe for a dollar a year—fine. But the asset belongs to the public that paid for it. When the lease expires, the city has leverage. The team can’t threaten to leave because it doesn’t own the building. A company that leases office space doesn’t own the building. A restaurant that leases retail space doesn’t own the shopping center. The idea that a billionaire should receive a free building—funded by the public, generating revenue exclusively for the private owner—is not how business works anywhere except professional sports.

Demand Revenue Sharing

If public ownership is too complicated, then demand a share of the revenue. Not concession sales—that’s the team’s business to run. But naming rights, luxury suite revenue, or a percentage of ticket sales should flow back to the entity that funded construction. If the naming rights sell for $20 million a year and the public paid for 60 percent of the building, the public should receive 60 percent of the naming rights revenue. Any venture capitalist who funded 60 percent of a startup and received zero percent of the revenue would be laughed out of the room. But that is exactly what happens with stadium deals. Every single time.

Demand Owners Who Care

This is the part that doesn’t show up in the policy papers but matters more than any of it. The problem is not public money for stadiums. The problem is public money for owners who don’t care about the city, who treat the franchise as a financial instrument, and who threaten to leave to extract maximum leverage.

An owner who is a fan of the team, who cares about the city, who invests in winning—that is a fundamentally different conversation than an owner who bought the team as a portfolio asset. Kraft is a Patriots fan. He cared enough to save the team from moving and pay for the stadium himself. That matters. John Fisher, who ran the A’s into the ground and moved them to a minor league park in Sacramento, is the opposite of that. The distinction is everything.

Cities should be evaluating not just the deal terms but the owner. Is this person a fan? Do they care about winning? Are they investing in the team or extracting from it? An owner who wants to be in your city is worth making a deal with. An owner who has to be bribed to stay is not.

The Green Bay Model

The Green Bay Packers are the proof that a different model is possible, and the fact that the NFL made it illegal tells you everything you need to know.

The Packers are a publicly held nonprofit corporation owned by 538,967 shareholders. No individual can hold more than 200,000 shares—about four percent. The team cannot relocate by charter. The bylaws describe the franchise as “a community project, intended to promote community welfare.” They have conducted six stock sales since 1923—most recently in 2021, when they raised $64 million from fans buying shares at $300 each. When the stadium needed a major renovation in 2000, Brown County voters approved a half-percent sales tax that raised $195 million of the $295 million project cost. The community funded it, the community owns the team, and the community benefits from the team’s $83.7 million in operating profit. Lambeau Field has sold out every game since 1960. Over a thousand consecutive sellouts.

The Green Bay model works—it is profitable, it produces sold-out stadiums, and it generates arguably the most rabid fan loyalty in professional sports. The league banned it because it works too well for the fans and not well enough for the billionaires who wanted to keep buying teams as private investments.

This model will never happen again. Every NFL franchise is now worth north of $5 billion. The economics of community ownership at that scale are basically impossible. But the NFL banned it in 1960, when it actually could have worked, when other cities could have replicated what Green Bay built. That tells you everything about whose interests the league has always protected.

The Tradeoff You’re Making

I am not going to pretend there is no cost. Every dollar spent on a stadium is a dollar not spent on something else. That is arithmetic, not politics. If you are going to argue—as I am arguing—that cities should fund stadiums to keep their teams, you should know what you are giving up.

Those numbers are real. Las Vegas spent $1.35 billion including bond interest on Allegiant Stadium while Clark County’s school district—the fifth-largest in the country—was chronically underfunded. Kansas is pledging $2 billion for a football stadium while its public schools have been the subject of ongoing adequacy litigation for decades.

Build the stadium anyway. But know exactly what you are trading for it—and demand terms that make the tradeoff less obscene. If the city is going to choose a football stadium over 40 schools, the city should at least own the football stadium. That is the bare minimum.

Keep the Team

I am no fan of this. But the reality is that if your city doesn’t pay, someone else’s will—and the thing you lose when the team leaves is not something any amount of public funding can rebuild. The economics are bad and the deals are worse and it makes me sick that we are giving people who have everything something more. But losing a team doesn’t just mean a bond didn’t get funded. It means a city loses part of its identity, part of its culture, part of what makes people proud to live there. That loss compounds in ways no economic impact study will ever capture.

Cities should demand equity in the stadiums they fund—at minimum, own the building, share the revenue, and make the owner prove they actually want to be there. But they should not let a team walk out the door to prove a point about fiscal responsibility. The point isn’t worth it.