Team player: these 10 tips can help boost the success rate of sports stadiums built with taxpayers' money.

• Author: Jacobson, Louis
• Position: FISCAL POLICY

The question of whether it's smart to use taxpayer funds to build a sports stadium has been argued endlessly in states across the country--for at least four decades, in fact. Generally, most economists, public officials and other experts are skeptical about the economic value of building taxpayer-subsidized stadiums, but there are times when it can make sense.

The Sports Draw

Stadiums have a unique pull because Americans are passionate about their sports teams. Even losing teams can draw large numbers of visitors, far more than other attractions like museums or musical performances.

Because of this, sport franchises can exert a lot of leverage--and they can convince other groups to do so as well, ranging from businesses and construction companies to labor unions and advocates of "smart growth," who often like the idea of mass-transit oriented, high-density projects anchored by a sports facility. Then there are the fans. They brag about the civic pride and higher quality of life that a sports team brings home.

Most economists, however, have concluded that if you want to spur economic development, building a sports stadium isn't a good bet. Being skeptical without being closed-minded is the right approach, says Andrew Zimbalist, a Smith College economist. "There certainly have been more cases than not where it hasn't worked out economically," he says. "But it doesn't mean that it can't."

"To the degree that residents' self-image is caught up in a team or they enjoy having a hometown team, a stadium is a fine thing to build," he says. But the city "shouldn't think of the stadium as an investment in civic infrastructure. It will not make a city rich."

For lawmakers considering funding requests for new stadiums, there is widespread agreement--based on interviews with 27 economists, former public officials and other experts--on some specific steps to take to tilt the economic equation more favorably toward taxpayers.

1 Ensure the project will attract out-of-towners.

One of the fundamental tasks of any economic development project is to attract money from outside the jurisdiction where it's built, and whose taxpayers are paying for a portion of it. If this goal isn't achieved, studies show, new projects will simply divert existing entertainment money from restaurants, movie theaters and the like to the stadium, rather than increasing overall economic activity.

"Visitors from out of town bring in dollars that otherwise would not be there," says Michael Pakko, an economist and economic forecaster at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. This can be a reason to advance projects close to state borders.

This still doesn't guarantee the project will bring value to the broader metropolitan area in question, however, says Brad Humphreys, an economist at West Virginia University who has testified about recent stadium...