Tampa Bay Stadium Case Study

The past 20 years have witnessed a massive transformation of professional sports stadiums in North America and the rest of the world. In the United States and Canada alone, by 2012, 125 of the 140 teams in the five largest professional sports leagues, the National Football League (NFL), Major League Baseball (MLB), National Basketball Association (NBA), Major League Soccer (MLS), and National Hockey League (NHL), will play in stadiums constructed or significantly renovated since 1990. This new construction has come at a significant cost, the majority of which has been covered by taxpayers. Construction costs alone for major league professional sports facilities have totaled in excess of $30 billion over the past two

Twenty years ago the United States started their first men’s soccer league. The Major League Soccer (MLS) started out in 1996 with 10 teams and has continued to grow the sport of soccer and the league currently has 20 teams. On the other hand, women’s soccer started a league after the U.S. women’s national team won the World Cup in 1996, but they failed to bring in revenue for the federation. The women are now on their third league and are starting to bring in the same sales as the men. Currently, when it comes to the national teams, the women are bringing in money for the federation while the men are losing the federation money, because they are not winning as many games as

     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

Sports Stadiums are an iconic staple of American tradition. However not everything about these venues is positive. Team owners take advantage of laws and fans to meet their own goals. Citizens and city officials from various locations have taken up their grievances with the NFL in the past. And it has gotten to the point where even political parties join together to bring to light issues with the organization. NFL stadiums are not good for cities because they take advantage of tax payers, hurt citizens on an economic level and cost them billions in subsidies.

The foundations teams came from different places inclusive of the Fall River, Bethlehem and also the Pennsylvania1. Soccer in the American League continued to thrive as they were great crowds who were in support of the teams and also this meant heavy attraction to the investors which could translate to numerous boost for the teams in the American soccer league.

Louis they had to use taxpayer funds just for all the sporting stadiums including the Rams, Blues, and Cardinals because St. Louis isn't a big enough city (Nocera 6). giving proof that St. Louis is not a big enough city to withhold several major franchises. The city itself does not meet its quota for the amount of people needed: "St. Louis a city of fewer than 320,000 people, with a shrinking tax base, simply couldn’t afford to help finance the $2 billion stadium that the Rams’ billionaire owner, E. Stanley Kroenke, was seeking"(Nocera 3). St. Louis is just a ghost town compared to cities like N.Y.C, Chicago, Atlanta, and Los Angeles. Having a thriving franchise means picking a big city that can pour more people into watching them. The St. Louis Rams will be relocating to Los Angeles but, "Kroenke and the Rams are not getting a penny in public money from Inglewood, Los Angeles or California, even though the stadium they are building is quite likely to cost more than $2 billion" (Nocera 21). The new stadium will be almost $2 billion more and Kroenke, the Rams owner, will not get any help from the public to help pay for the new

The dream, the vision and the action to finalize a deal which would bring a Major League Baseball (MLB) team to the City of St. Petersburg was realized in 1998 when the Tamp Bay Devil Rays took the field for the first time at Tropicana Field. The City of St. Petersburg became victorious in succeeding where Tampa had prevailed so many times before. The triumph came when a group of ambitious businessmen collaborated to build what became the Florida Suncoast Dome in 1988 in downtown St. Petersburg. There had been a competition between Tampa and St. Petersburg to see who would build a new baseball stadium first. Tampa already had Raymond James Stadium, had built MacDill Air Force Base and the Florida Aquarium, St.Petersburg had nothing. St. Petersburg desperate to attract big business and attractions to the west side of Tampa Bay went and built the new stadium before securing a major league baseball team. The city was buried deep in the controversial move, for a mid market city to invest in a stadium without first securing a franchise could cost the city and the tax payers significantly. The gamble paid off and through years of trying to lure a franchise from other cities and being denied at every opportunity, the City of St. Petersburg was granted an expansion team by MLB.

What they find is that many people have a budget for entertainment and therefore money spent at a sporting event is money that would otherwise have been spent at some other entertainment outlet in the city. They call this phenomena the “substitution effect” and accordingly, it is now included in most all stadium development proposals. In Oakland the situation is no different. While many Oakland A’s fans do hail from municipalities outside of Oakland, the Bay Area as a whole is quite mobile in particular when it comes to entertainment. These non Oakland residents may be going out to eat or drink in Oakland instead of going to a ball game therefore the substitution effect would render the new stadiums impact rather minimal.

Sports teams are a symbol of a cities pride. Take for example the Chicago Cubs. They create a sense of loyalty toward that city. However, none of that would happen without a stadium. Stadiums and teams can play a very important role in a cities economy, or they could also be irrelevant. To decide whether or not they are useful or not you must first understand each side of the argument. So first, let’s examine the pros of having a stadium within your city. Then, we will discuss the harms of having one. And finally, decide which side is more beneficial for the economy.

At a recent management meeting Charlie Musselman, the president of the company, expressed optimism at winning the contract and revealed that the company could net as much as $2 million on the project. He also said that if they are successful, the prospects for future projects are quite good since there are quite a few major stadiums in Canada that will need replacing in the next 25 years.

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

Each of the  stadiums are funded in unique ways, communities do not benefit from new stadiums, and stadiums do not save a struggling downtown. Foremost, stadiums hurt public schools, and this money should be used for more important public services.  There are many  reasons we subsidize sports, but stadiums do not help the economy, and there are no net benefits from stadiums.  Teams strive for new stadiums to create an image,  but there are  options so that a community will not loose a team to another city without building a new stadium.

This directly impacts the projected NPV of the project as almost 95% of the cash flows are derived from this boost in sales. In addition to the financial support, remodeling the Stadium location also fits well with their business strategy. Some of the key supporting evidence includes a high percentage of the target market in the trade area at 42% of college educated adults, and a population with the highest median income of the group at $65,931. Most important to Target however, would be the maintenance of their brand. As a company that places a high value on the image of their brand, revitalizing a lagging store would both keep their presence in the local area and potentially draw more customers to an upgraded location. The final decision would be to accept the project under no budget constraints, but not issue new debt or equity to achieve it.

America is in the midst of a sports construction boom. New sports facilities costing at least $200 million each have been completed or are under way in Baltimore, Charlotte, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Nashville, San Francisco, St. Louis, Seattle, Tampa, and Washington, D.C., and are in the planning stages in Boston, Dallas, Minneapolis, New York, and Pittsburgh. Major stadium renovations have been undertaken in Jacksonville and Oakland. Industry experts estimate that more than $7 billion will be spent on new facilities for professional sports teams before 2006.

Despite increasing costs, bitter political battles over tax support of facilities, and increasing salaries of players, the number of individuals willing to buy teams has not increased. The cost of owning a franchise has increased steadily. For example, the Los Angeles Dodgers were recently sold for more than $300 million, and when the new owners of any franchise invest that much money,