StupidpartyLand

A voice of reason in the land of Stupidparty, pointing out the banal and often contradictory positions in StupidpartyLand, USA.

  • Home
  • SP Platform
    • Trump
    • Foreign Policy
    • SP Leaders
    • Disciples
    • Economics
    • Religion
    • Voter Suppression
    • Gun Culture
    • Freedoms
    • Racism & Bigotry
    • Environment
    • Fake Journalism, Misinformation
    • Abortion & Birth Control
    • Satire
    • Sexual Equality
    • Personal Journeys
  • Books
  • Videos
    • Facebook
    • Economics
    • Leaders
    • Ignorance
    • Religion
    • Environment
    • Exposed
    • Humor
  • Polls
  • About
    • Mission
    • Mailing List
    • Support the SmartParty Agenda
    • Friends & Supporters
    • Write for Us
  • SP Lives On
    • Twits will Tweet
    • SParty needs SPeople
    • SParty not SP-arty
    • SPigotry
    • Democracy is Dying
    • Income Discrepancy
    • Kochtopus
    • The 67%
    • Voter Suppression – Ginsburg
    • The Electorate Has Spoken
    • Puzzles
    • Gallery
    • Action
    • SP Myth – Voter Fraud

The Big Con: Publicly Funded NFL and NBA Sports Stadiums.

February 5, 2015 By Patrick Andendall 4 Comments

While you were sleeping the real Moochers just pocketed your tax dollars and emaciated your favorite national Sports. This blog post was inspired by a Stupidparty disciple’s response to a Facebook posting I had made. Every now and then I will take one of their posts and give them a public whipping.

By Patrick Andendall

Let’s examine the mind of a typical Stupidparty Disciple, a mind that can only think with it’s gut and regurgitate the processed fed drivel coming out of the orifice’s of the Oligarch’s unending tools of misinformation. 

This was the response I got regarding the below graphic drawing attention to Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s priorities.

Thomas Poteete

 
It is vital not only to rebut this type of thinking, but to tear it to shreds – because so much is at stake and so many people are not acting in their own best interests. The resources aligned against this person are just totally overwhelming. So in reality it is not his really his fault that he is so off base.

Stupidparty Sports Stadium

 Wisconsin Governor and Presidential hopeful  Scott Walker. This Koch puppet and now dedicated destroyer of “Middle Class” Union Jobs  will become an ever more polarizing individual. As a result —crazed Stupidparty Zombie’s will happily throw themselves under Walker’s bus. But I must admit when I first posted the image in question I had not looked into the actual inner workings of Major League Sport Stadium deviancy. I had my first inkling of the issue when I was writing my farewell ode to Romney, and while trying to explain why it was clear that he would not be running in 2016—I had read the following off Politico:

“Romney was working hard to win support from several top names including casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, New York Jets owner Woody Johnson and New York hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer, among others. But he had not locked down public support from many top GOP donors and bundlers and “clearly wasn’t going to have the kind of support that people would have thought,” said one veteran Republican donor.”

It was that name Woody Johnson that got me riled up. I have already written about how the Oligarchs in waiting are asset stripping off the backs of the American people. These billionaires, they are the moochers. Many of them pay so badly, or pollute so wantonly, or avoid taxes so brazenly – that it is the Tax payers that have to clean up after their mess. They have no interest in paying a living wage – and the rest of us have to chip in.


CNN reports:  “If you’re a U.S. taxpayer then you’re subsidizing the wildly profitable National Football League, regardless of whether you’re a fan.The NFL is the most profitable pro sports league in the U.S., raking in an estimated $1 billion in profits on $10.5 billion in revenue last season, figures that are sure to increase this year.

Those massive profits are made possible in part by the billions of taxpayer dollars that local governments spend on teams, coupled with tax breaks worth hundreds of millions for the teams, the league, their sponsors and fans.

“I’ve been studying this for 15 years, and I still can not believe cities and states are lined up begging to give money to these very profitable [teams],” said Villanova professor Rick Eckstein, an expert on stadium finance.”

Yes OK, but do Tax payer subsidies create a good return on the investment?
The Atlantic Reports: “However, according to leading sports economists, stadiums and arenas rarely bring about the promised prosperity, and instead leave cities and states mired in debt that they can’t pay back before the franchise comes calling for more.

“The basic idea is that sports stadiums typically aren’t a good tool for economic development,” said Victor Matheson, an economist at Holy Cross who has studied the economic impact of stadium construction for decades. When cities cite studies (often produced by parties with an interest in building the stadium) touting the impact of such projects, there is a simple rule for determining the actual return on investment, Matheson said: “Take whatever number the sports promoter says, take it and move the decimal one place to the left. Divide it by ten, and that’s a pretty good estimate of the actual economic impact.”

Others agree. While “it is inarguable that within a few blocks you’ll have an effect,” the results are questionable for metro areas as a whole, Stefan Szymanski, a sports economist at the University of Michigan, said.”

Let us take an Example: The New York Times Reports:
Glendale, Arizona paid $300 million for the ‪#‎Superbowl‬ stadium. The city’s debt is now 4 times the national median, 40% solely for sports complexes. Glendale’s budget crisis is so dire half of the city’s teachers, firefighters, and police were threatened with layoffs–but were saved by a permanent 10% sales tax on residents. This is the Superbowl scandal you didn’t hear about. 
NFL Crooks

 
It is Ironic that Forbes magazine is often a source for really insightful Math – it is ironic because the almost (half a) Billionaire Steve Forbes, who twice tried running for President, is quite the Stupidparty archetype, endorsing intellectual heavy weight Rick Perry for President in 2012, he and his magazine’s writers offer investment advice on the weekly Fox TV show Forbes on Fox . But I suspect that this mini me Oligarch has figured— why run President when we the Oligarch’s can own the Government.

Forbes explains the only two Net Tax Payer Benefits that the tax payer gets back are 1) steering purchases toward activities with higher tax rates and 2) taxing out-of-town visitors. By following the Math, one can follow who benefits from virtually all of the Tax payers money.

“It is easily possible (and in fact quite likely) that a new stadium will produce more in related economic activity than the cost of any public financing (even if a government pays for all the costs). However, it doesn’t matter if businesses take in more money than taxpayers shelled out to build the stadium; what matters is whether the taxes collected from all that activity are more than the up-front taxpayer cost. A visitor to the Super Bowl might spend $500 on an airplane ticket, $2000 on his hotel, $300 on food, plus $500 on the ticket to the game. That sounds like a lot of economic activity for just one visitor. However, the plane ticket generates roughly zero money for local and state governments (there may be some airport taxes but they will go toward running the airport). The hotel stay probably produces $200-250 in tax revenue, the restaurant bills another $20, and the game ticket another $35. That means the over $3000 in spending really amounts to around $300 in tax revenue. Some of that tax revenue has to go toward government costs associated with the holding of sports events: extra police, traffic control, perhaps more public transit, etc. At the end of the day, only a very small fraction of total spending associated with stadium events is left over to help pay back the taxpayers for building a stadium.

Businesses near the stadium like restaurants and hotels might win from the extra local spending, but why should taxpayers pay so that a few favored businesses can see greater profits?

On to the second point. When people spend money to go to a sporting event, they cannot just pull that money out of thin air (tragic, but true). Rather, the money comes from their family budget, meaning something else has to give. If I buy tickets to an Atlanta Hawks game, the result of that spending might mean several fewer trips to the movies, not going to a local amusement park, or not going to a local restaurant or two.

Stadium boosters like to point to all the money I will spend going to, at, and associated with my trip to see the Hawks, but they never focus on the fact that other businesses are going to lose a roughly equal amount of spending that I would have done instead. All that substitute spending would also have produced tax revenue. Those taxes associated to sporting events are not all new revenues, but mostly just substitutes for taxes that would have been collected on an alternate activity.

In fact, local and state governments get new tax revenue from stadium-related events in only two ways: steering purchases toward activities with higher tax rates and taxing out-of-town visitors.”

Therefore all these tax payer subsidies end up in the pocket of the massively profitable franchises and massively wealthy owners like New York Jets owner Woody Johnson, all so he can sell absurdly expensive tickets and suites to the likes of New York hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer. (A suite at the Superbowl costs between $400,000, $1,000,000) Both these guys have been strong supporters of Romney, and we should all know what that means. 

Picture

 
Where does that suckered Taxpayer get to sit, (well obviously not in a suite that they financed) assuming they can afford about $500 for the tickets, not to mention  all the other associated expenses. Since the best seats  are invariably taken – the poor tax payer might well regret not bringing in his own Hubble telescope to actually see the game. May be they get to sit in the leather seats that they provided to another Billionaire owner:

The Atlantic reports “Taxpayers have, in stages, provided about $1 billion to build and later renovate what is now known as the Mercedes-Benz Superdome. (All monetary figures in this article have been converted to 2013 dollars.) The Saints’ owner, Tom Benson, whose net worth Forbes estimates at $1.2 billion, keeps nearly all revenue from ticket sales, concessions, parking, and broadcast rights. Taxpayers even footed the bill for the addition of leather stadium seats with cup holders.” 

 

 Stadium Suites
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   Joe has his seat, but he is worried…
 
Why didn’t Obama extend the Bush Tax Cut on the top 0.5%?
 
I doubt that the tax payer will ever get to benefit from  the work out room:
“In Virginia, Republican Governor Bob McDonnell, (has since been sentenced to one year in jail – for other types of corruption) who styles himself as a budget-slashing conservative crusader, took $4 million from taxpayers’ pockets and handed the money to the Washington Redskins, for the team to upgrade a workout facility. Hoping to avoid scrutiny, McDonnell approved the gift while the state legislature was out of session. The Redskins’ owner, Dan Snyder, has a net worth estimated by Forbes at $1 billion. But even billionaires like to receive expensive gifts.”
Perhaps the Owners are in need of Public assistance? Lets us look at that. Since the finances of the teams are so secretly guarded – it simply becomes absurd that these guys get Tax Payer subsidies. Only a thoroughly corrupted political system would allow this to happen right under every ones noses:
NFL Owners Wealth Rankings

 

Family Guy Stupid Conservatives

So how  do they these guys get away with it? First off politicians are already in the pockets of the hugely wealthy, who would have these supposedly democratically elected politicians on their personal speed dial’s in the first place. Secondly, this is not simply robbing poor Peter to pay wealthy Paul – no the trick is cleverer than that  – Paul makes sure it is Peter against Peter (the tax payers of two different States or regions). Paul just stands back and takes the winnings, all the way to his personal banker, while both Peters are knocked out of the ball park. 

But the Insults to the Tax payers just get worse and worse. These owners are not mostly interested in the sport, they are mainly in it for the massive profits that they get to pocket, and that their bought off congressman ensure remain largely under taxed, via a variety of loopholes and accounting gimmicks that are so zealously protected by a corrupted congress and halfwits like “Joe the Plumber.” So what is their game, how do they extract even more from the poor suckered taxpayers?

Now sit down and imagine your are going to spend the next three or four hours watching an NFL Football game. Hidden behind all the noise and fanfare, all the ads and product placements, hidden behind that is the hallucination that you are there to watch a sporting event – the mirage of sport, the biggest trick of them all. During this 3-4 hour time span the NFL and it’s owners will provide you the tax payer fan with less than 11 minutes of live action. Now to put this into some type of perspective (since perspective has been long gone) the Worlds most popular sport which we have to call Soccer – has two halves of play, each with 45 minutes of uninterrupted play—for 90 minutes of action. 

Average NFL TV Broadcast

 
Again Ironic that a Publication that is a tool of the new American order, is the source of this data.
NFL is the richest sporting league in the world with an annual average revenue in excess of $6 billion, where players are multimillionaires. Out of the 32 NFL teams 26 are billionaires thus making the total valuation in excess of $25 billion.

Forbes Magazine Explains:
While the league office is run as a not-for-profit “trade association” promoting [the] interests of its 32 member clubs,” all but one of those clubs are privately held, for-profit companies that reveal next to nothing about their finances. 

The 31 privately held teams keep their finances shrouded in mystery.

“Beyond the normal tax concerns, profit squeezes can be used to negotiate down player costs and convince lawmakers to pay for new stadiums. Operating expenses, according to Vrooman, are where teams tend to “blow the most smoke,” when outside parties have been able to look at their books. “The non-player costs are highly irregular to say the least,” he says. “The scams range from owners employing themselves to disguising taxable return on equity as tax-sheltered interest on club debt.”

But perhaps a clue to the underlying wealth, of these tax payer mooching machines, can be found in how well the Commissioner gets paid.

NFL Commissioner Pay

 
So what have these owners – these proven moochers done to American sport. American Football get 6% of action time, Soccer 78%. The most similar non USA game would be Rugby which is a more popular sport and it has 84% action time. A Soccer player runs on average about  7-9 miles, A Rugby player 5 miles and an American Football player 0.2 miles.
Action Time for Worlds Most Popular Team Sports. Red = US Sports
Action Time Per Sport

 
Americans have not even noticed or wonder why they do not really participate in International Team Sport. 
The Final nail in the Coffin? (Of course not) The NBA is seriously talking about reducing the game times from 48 to 44 mins – thus invalidating the whole history of stats – and look at the justifications being promulgated. 

At the NBA coaches meeting last month, length of games was a topic, and it was suggested the NBA consider a shorter format that would reduce the length of game as a means to reduce minutes for some players and maybe improve the flow of the game.
 
Did they really say that? You have got to be kidding.

And I almost forgot the second part of my task: 
 
Thomas Poteete

 

Picture

It seems some people fall for stupidparty propaganda hook line and sinker. Evidently only people who can afford $250,000 per child for higher education should have access to it. That is fine if you are happy for society to devolve into two species as predicted by H.G. Well’s in his novel “The Time Machine.”

Public college is not a “money sink” – researchers in California reckon tax payers get a 450% return on their investment. I can not speak for Red States, where Stupidparty devotee parents may have a more harmful impact on their Children’s ability to develop critical thinking skills. I also provide a specific example of what happens to ones personal growth if you can get a good education.

Regarding opposing research – be wary of any Institution with the words Freedom or Heritage or Patriot in the title as that would most likely be Koch and Co backed fake research Institutes. There is good money to be earned in being a tool for the Oligarchs. Never forget what Freedom really means to these Ayn Rand devotees:

“Freedom (n.):To ask nothing.To expect nothing.To depend on nothing.”
― Ayn Rand The Fountainhead

The Road to Fascism & the Road to  Ayn Rand’s Galt’s Kingdom—lead to the same Koch palace.


Share this:

  • Tweet
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Reddit
  • Share on Tumblr
  • Pocket
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email
  • Click to print (Opens in new window) Print

Filed Under: Asset Stripping, Economics, Featured, SP Disciples, SP Platform Tagged With: Koch Brothers, Mitt Romney, Scott Walker, Sheldon Adelson

Comments

  1. kimothyanne says

    September 27, 2015 at 9:32 am

    I appreciate the research and information but, I must wonder; how many NFL fans will read this and promptly forget it? After all, they’ve more than likely spent their entire adult lives and a good portion of their disposable income subsidizing these guys. Not to mention that the “good feelings” they so fondly remember have been reinforced by the same neurological process that works for any addict; dopamine and glutamate processes/reinforcement.
    Sadly, I suspect this will, almost literally, go in one ear and out the other for those who needed this information most. However, those of us who are not enamored of the sport appreciate the info.

    Reply
    • Patrick Andendall says

      September 27, 2015 at 8:17 pm

      But isn’t that the core of the problem – your comments explain why we have stupidparty today. All I can do is scream facts from the roof top – and one thing you can do is help spread all these irrefutable facts. Here is just one place to start, plus I provide all the resources – by subject in an easy to find manner. http://stupidpartyland.com/support-the-smartparty-agenda

      Reply
  2. Victor says

    March 15, 2016 at 10:43 am

    I’m not even a Packer fan but I am proud that the residents of Green Bay own the team. It’s one of the few positive stories one can tell about NFL owners and their relationship with the city

    Reply
  3. Walter Spargo says

    May 9, 2016 at 1:34 am

    A year after this was published, Mark Davis realized that the City of Oakland wasn’t going to give him public money to build there, so he has come to Nevada and is asking us for the largest public subsidy in sports history. I’ve heard $750 and $780 of the projected $1.4B cost of the stadium. That exceeds the highest one to date (Lucas Oil Stadium home of the Indianapolis Colts) by nearly $100 million. He pledges $500M and is getting $150M from an unknown private source; presumably the $26 billion dollar man, Sheldon Adelson whom he is partnered with. The proposed TIF will reimburse them both.

    I just wish the Nevada State Legislature would tell them where to stick it and spend that money on our public schools, which are the worst in the country and our homelessness problem which is 3rd most per 100,000 in the country. Maybe you could send them a letter and let them know what a terrible idea it would be to allow these multi-billionaires to rob us.

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Check out our books!

Get all 3 books in the series, StupidpartyLand
Click here-available in print and eBook.

Math v. Myth Newsletter

Learn more about the
Learn more about Deliverance from Stupidparty Land

Follow me on Twitter

My Tweets

Tags

2016 Presidential Election Abortion & Birth Control ALEC American Oligarchy Ben Carson Bernie Sanders Big Oil Civil War Donald Trump Ebola Outbreak Environment Evolution Fact Over Fiction Fox News George W. Bush GOP Gun Culture Hillary Clinton Iraq War ISIS Jeb Bush Kansas Koch Brothers Mitt Romney Netanyahu NRA Obama Obamacare Police Brutality Pope Francis Pro-Lifers Putin Racism & Bigotry Religion Roger Ailes Rush Limbaugh Sarah Palin Sheldon Adelson stupidparty Supreme Court Syrian Civil War Ted Cruz Texas United States of Incarceration Voter Suppression

Search the website:

Let's Work Together

  • Get our Newsletter
  • Support the SMARTparty Agenda
  • Write for Us

Copyright © 2025 stupidpartyland.com