Sports Teams Drain Community Resources.

• Position: Brief Article

A new report charges that professional sports reams are more likely to drain local economies than promote economic growth. The report, written by two University of Maryland economics professors, concludes that the average net effect of professional baseball stadiums on local economies, for example, is a $10 reduction in real per capita income, and the results are similar for all professional sports teams. The report authors claim that their research is broader and deeper than the research conducted for other studies that concluded that the economic impact of professional sports facilities on local communities is either positive or neutral. For this study, the authors examined 37 U.S. cities with one or...