They Play, You Pay: Why Taxpayers Build Ballparks, Stadiums, and Arenas for Billionaire Owners and Millionaire Players.

• Author: Sauew, Raymond
• Position: Book review

* They Play, You Pay: Why Taxpayers Build Ballparks, Stadiums, and Arenas for Billionaire Owners and Millionaire Players By James T. Bennett New York: Springer, 2012. Pp. vii, 225. $19.95 paperback.

Academic economists argue among themselves about almost any proposition, but on one issue there is remarkable agreement. In a recent survey of economists, the claim that "[1]local and state governments in the U.S should eliminate subsidies for professional sports franchises" received overwhelming support (Robert Whaples, "Do Economists Agree on Anything? Yes!" Economists' Voice S, no. 9 [2006], p. 1). There is an equally remarkable lack of harmony between estimates of the economic benefits of professional sports produced by scholars and claims of economic impact produced by the industry's hired consultants. The scholarly literature is replete with dozens of studies that document only minute to modest impacts, at best, of locating a sports franchise in a city (see, for example, Dennis Coates and Brad Humphreys, "Do Economists Reach a Conclusion on Subsidies for Sports Franchises, Stadiums, and Mega-events?" Econ Journal Watch 5, no. 3 [2008]: 294-315). Yet team owners and their consultants, armed with formulaic claims of grandiose benefits, repeatedly succeed in tapping state and local treasuries for the purpose of stadium building. This is so even in the face of apparent majorities opposed to sports subsidies.

Owners of America's premier sports teams have successfully played the system in much the same way as owners of prime farmland, another puzzling feature in political economy. In They Play, You Pay, lames T. Bennett provides an account of this recurring event. He serves up a steady stream of historical vignettes of franchise-relocation threats and public funding of sports stadiums, and he summarizes what he calls "enough empirical evidence to fill Yankee Stadium" (p. 169) on this issue. Bennett writes with a blend of wry humor, indignation, and ultimately resignation about this "welfare program" for the "billionaire owners" of North America's sports teams.

It's a large program, too. Bennett cites evidence that "governments contributed $10.34 billion to major league stadium and arena projects" between 1995 and 2009 alone (p. 164), a figure that has been replicated in several studies. But the political drama over stadium building has played out over the better part of the past century, dating to construction of the Los Angeles Coliseum in...