Professional Sports Teams Move - Cities Fight To Keep Them Professional sports, like most of our popular culture, can be understood only partly by through its exiting plays and tremendous athletes. Baseball and football most of all are not only games anymore but also hardcore businesses. As businesses, sports leagues can be as conniving, deceitful, and manipulative as any other businesses in the world. No matter what the circumstances are, it seems that Politicians are always some how right around the corner from the world of sports. These Politicians look to exploit both the cultural and the economic dimensions of the sports for their own purposes. This is what is known in the sports industry as “playing …show more content…
This type of political confrontations enables teams to control debate, leaving city officials playing defense. Possibly those who are most effected by the sport’s industry’s willingness to abandon a community are the dedicated fans. When Al Davis moved the Oakland Raiders to Los Angeles, he pulled away from some of sport’s most loyal fans and also hurt his football team. The NFL’s Colts and Cardinals have also had failures on the field since their moves. These three teams are proof that all the greed that was put into the moving of their franchises hasn’t brought them more success or in some cases less success. In every move there are two sides to the politics. There are the teams themselves and there are the cities that fight to keep them. In May 1991, Sharon Pratt Dixon, Mayor of Washington, D.C. said, “We’re going to do whatever it takes to keep the Redskins here. Sports has become an industry, and to the extent that we can guarantee jobs for the District residents, we will do whatever it takes, including building the stadium ourselves” (Euchner 1), this is one view of how a city official fights for a team. The other viewpoint is from the side of the team owner, Al Davis, managing general partner of the Raiders said, “just build it” (Euchner 1). These viewpoints are why sports teams move and cities fight to keep
Thus we can see why public money is eagerly donated. The full costs of a stadium and the damage it does to communities are often years in the future, long after the politician is known for being the hero that save our local team and has moved on to bigger and better things, now with the campaign funding of the very teams that they built homes for and the fans who continue to pay. Team owners can choose new cities but cities can’t choose new teams thanks to the leagues government-sanctioned monopolies over franchise placement, mayors for example, feel they must offer owners anything they want. “Politicians continue
Anyone who has been involved in an organized sport, whether it is backyard football or a high school sports team, knows that these sports all have organizations that are responsible for setting rules, determining conditions of play, and penalizing individuals who infringe the rules. Some of the organizations like the National Football league and the MLB are familiar to most people, the rules they follow are not generally understood by anyone who is not closely associated with the sport. Most fans and sport critics assume that what is happening inside these organizations are of little concern to them. However, this is not the case. In the MLB, the New York Yankees spend an excessive amount of money every year to obtain big name players. A
Stadium subsidies are used to fiancé new stadiums. The government provides financial support to franchises that allows them to build their new stadiums. These subsidies are costing tax payers millions and do not seem to be in the best interest of the city the stadium is in. Those in favor of using tax payer dollars to build stadiums argue that the economic impact a professional franchise has on a city is great and a new stadium will help generate revenue. Research has shown this is not the case. Most stadiums cost the city and never produce enough revenue to make up for those costs (Bast, 1990).
Have you ever wonder what is the big deal with teams with Native Americans name? I'm going to tell you about the argument with teams that have Native Americans such as the Washington Redskins. With a lot of people trying to get the Washington Redskins to change their because it's racist, they still don't because the cost of name change and uniforms, and quiet simply their is not enough support to change it.
How can you expect the St. Louis Rams to pay off their stadium in St. Louis when they can’t even get a full house to watch and support them? This is why the St. Louis Rams should move back to the 2nd most popular city in America, Los Angeles. The NFL wanted to move to L.A. so badly that "The N.F.L. claims that St. Louis always had a real shot at retaining the Rams, a claim that’s hard to believe" (Nocera 14). Not getting the support, constant losing streaks of countless seasons, and also being in financial debt. Give L.A a chance and move the Rams back to their hometown. This could spark up a revolution of winning seasons, sold out games, and superbowls. Relocate to revive the Rams
With how many sporting events that there are in this country, it is common to see fans that love multiple games. Professional sports are typically favored by most followers, but there is a clear deficiency that hurts the leagues. Professional sports are exhilarating if one is a fan of a playoff team or especially a team that wins championships on a regular basis. While this is great for traditional powerhouses and teams with endless amounts of money, the majority of teams in these leagues serve as punching bags for years or even multiple decades. There is a fine line between these teams and other organizations that struggle just to make financial ends meet. Teams in financial
I disagree with this article and think that Liberty has more important things to report about then NFL team name changes. You make a lot of assumptions and absolutes that honestly you aren’t qualified to make. Sometimes in order for progress to be made change needs to happen. I’m still a little shocked someone actually thought this article worthy of publishing. National protests began in 1988, after the team's Super Bowl XXII victory, prompting numerous Native Americans wrote letters to Redskins owner Jack Kent Cooke while others boycotted Redskins products and protested, but Cooke rejected the possibility of change. As a nation, and as a nation who loves sports there are far more pressing issues at had than the Redskins team name. As an alumni I am sad to see this in the Champion. This is a perfect example of how the media has taken a name that has been the name for
It is this backdrop of issues that prompted the U.S. Congress to begin to investigate Major League Baseball’s internal controls and testing programs (or lack thereof). The action by the government was the final straw that caused this widely known, but little discussed problem to be brought to the light of public debate and discussion. This issue has the potential for wide-ranging consequences throughout professional baseball. Senior Management (in this case - team owners) could be affected in a number of different ways. Among these are: 1) loss of fan base, 2) loss of credibility and stature as “America’s Pastime”, 3) loss of revenues from corporate sponsors, 4) potential labor problems, 5) government involvement
Proponents of subsidizing sports stadiums is a great decision because the economic impact it will have on the community is great for two main reasons. First, sports stadiums are massive construction projects. In fact, one could compare them to a medieval cathedral in their attempts to dominate a skyline and inspire pride in one’s city And, just like these cathedrals, they are very expensive, and massive building projects that would require many years of hard painstaking labor. For example, the proposed stadium for the Los Angeles Rams in Inglewood, California, was predicted to cost $3 billion and add 22,000 construction jobs to the economy of Los Angeles, California. Although construction jobs do eventually disappear once a stadium is constructed once the games begin, so does the massive consumer spending. For example, more than 3.5 million people saw the St. Louis Cardinals play at Busch Stadium in 2015.
In the United States, new sports stadiums are commonly seen as a vital part of the redevelopment of a city having a great economic growth with the production of jobs and a positive income builder. After this, the owners of the pro sports teams with millions and millions of dollars of subsidies for the construction of new stadiums and arenas and expect these facilities to generate economic benefits exceeding these subsidies by large margins. However, a growing body of fact indicates that professional sports facilities, and the franchises they are home to, may not be engines of economic benefit anywhere claims Sachse, “. In reality, sports franchises typically account for a very small proportion of the total economic output of the cities in which they reside.” Some economical studies on the amount of income and employment in US cities find no evidence of positive economic benefits associated with past sports facility construction and some studies find that professional sports facilities and teams have a net negative economic impact on income and employment. It just shows that these results suggest that at best, professional sports teams and facilities provide non-pecuniary benefits like civic pride, and a greater sense of community, along with consumption benefits to those attending games and following the local team in the media; at worst, residents
The net worth of an owner of a major sports team often ranges in the billions. However, when it comes time for a new stadium or renovations need to be made to a current one, taxpayers often foot a large portion of the bill. Given their immense wealth, sports owners should fund stadiums on their own. Over the last two decades, taxpayers have paid nearly $7 billion in funding for NFL stadiums alone. Not only is that amount staggering, but the same could be said about the manner in which the funds are acquired in the first place. Often, this money finds its way to team owners subsequent to threats of team relocation. Until recently, destination cities such as Las Vegas and Los Angeles were not home to an NFL team. As a result of this, team owners would threaten to relocate to these cities if the proper amount of public funding was not secured. Furthermore, a lot of misinformation regarding job growth and boosts to the local economy is spread to help the case of the owners.
Taxpayers have been forced to pay for these stadiums in various ways. People who were not part of the majority and voted "no" on new a stadium have to pay the same amount of taxes as the people
Aside from the Rams, the San Diego Chargers and the Oakland Raiders are the other two teams that are considering relocation. What all three teams have in common is an inability to get the necessary support for a new stadium in the teams current home base. NFL Fans will note that both the Raiders and the Rams have a prior relationship with Los Angeles. The Raiders played in the old Los Angeles Coliseum from 1983-1994 and the Rams played in the area from 1946-1994 before moving to St.
If Seattle is looking for an edge all it has to do is pull out it's wallet. The Sounders benefit from a unique financial situation. Remember the marketing strategies I mentioned earlier ? I guarantee you that at least 90% of them are profitable. Seattle's still rolling in the dough regardless because they play rent free. Talk about an edge. Everyone would function at a higher level if they didn't have to worry about money.
Reid believes that the NFL, who spent so much time over the possibility that the Patriots potentially could’ve probably deflated some footballs (a completely different topic for another day), didn’t spend enough time focusing on the Washington NFL team name. As Reid said, “I find it stunning that the National Football League is more concerned about how much air is in a football than with a racist franchise name that denigrates Native Americans across the country. The Redskins name is a racist name” (Garcia). In this certain circumstance, many people agree with Reid that the NFL prioritized over the wrong thing, especially when one’s about a little air coming out of the football and the other is discriminating against part of their viewing audience. There was even 50 senators, doesn’t include names but I assume Harry Reid was apart of those 50 senators, that signed a letter urging the NFL to force Dan Snyder quoting that the name is racist, derogatory, and indecent to the Native American culture. If Dan Snyder would get past his ignorance then maybe, just maybe, the D.C would allow the team to move back into the District of