CMV: Taxpayer dollars should not be used to subsidize the building of new professional sports stadiums.

Professional sports teams are most often owned by millionaires and billionaires. So why is it when they need a new stadium, so often are the taxpayers forced to have their money spent on building it? Especially in large cities that already have robust tourism?

There is an argument that the stadiums bring in revenue to the city/local economy that offset the subsidies. It is thought that people traveling to the city for games will spend money on hotels, restaurants, shopping, seeing local museums and the like, and that the income from those new tourists, brought on solely by the professional sports team, will be a boon to the local economy. This "fact", however, has been disputed by economists for decades. Here are a few resources showing that this is not the case:

https://www.usnews.com/opinion/thomas-jefferson-street/articles/2017-03-28/las-vegas-bet-on-an-oakland-raiders-stadium-wont-pay-off

https://economicaccountability.org/get-informed/stadium-subsidies/

https://taxfoundation.org/blog/sports-stadium-subsidies-taxpayers/

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4022547

Understand that most of the resources posted are articles, however they link to or cite studies. The last one is a literature review looking at over 130 studies to determine that there is likely 0 to almost 0 positive economic impact from a professional sports stadium.

When pitching their stadiums and asking for the subsidies, teams will often cite high numbers of potential economic impact, however these numbers are generally inflated by treating all potential visitors as "new spenders", when the majority are locals anyway, and the spending that would occur in the community would likely occur anyway, regardless of the sports team, and can even take away spending from other local entertainment venues.

The "jobs created" are generally low-paying, seasonal, and very part-time. One quote from the literature review stated “The large and growing peer-reviewed economics literature on the economic impacts of stadiums, arenas, sports franchises, and sport megaevents has consistently found no substantial evidence of increased jobs, incomes, or tax revenues for a community associated with any of these things.”

I feel all of this is doubly true when we're talking about building a new stadium for a team that already has a stadium in that city. In this case, there will be no real positive impact on the local economy, because most of the jobs already exist, and the draw for city tourism already exists.

To change my view: You'll need to show that the evidence I've presented is somehow faulty. That there are well-developed studies that show that tax subsidies for the building of new professional sports stadiums have a significant positive impact on the community that outweighs the taxpayer dollars used in the construction/maintenance.

Or, you can show that even with a mostly zero positive economic impact, that there is some other positive community impact that justifies the utilization of large amounts of taxpayer dollars that could otherwise be used for other community improvements.