Why stadium subsidies always win.

• Author: Gillespie, Nick
• Position: Soundbite - Interview with economist J.C. Bradbury - Interview

J.C. Bradbury is the author of two baseball books, The Baseball Economist: The Real Game Exposed (2007), and Hot Stove Economics: Understanding Baseball's Second Season (2010). Bradbury, who teaches economics at Kennesaw State University, spoke with reason.com editor Nick Gillespie at July's FreedomFest about the economics of publicly subsidized sports stadiums. To see a video of this interview, go to reason.com.

Q: You're an economist and you write a lot about sports and big pork projects. There's a massive one happening in Atlanta. Can you tell us about that?

A: Just recently, the city of Atlanta decided it was going to give significant subsidies for the new Atlanta Falcons stadium. The stadium's going to be $1 to $1.2 billion and--

Q: That's what they say now, but by the time it's finished it'll be a little bit more, right?

A: Exactly. And that's one of the things we often find about these stadiums. They always underestimate the cost and overstate the benefits. It always takes longer than they say.

Q: We see this at every level of sports in every part of the country. Somebody will say, "This is a major boon to the local economy, it's going to create jobs, the money's gonna be falling out of the sky." That is never true. Talk about why these stadiums are not actual public works projects.

A: This is a great case of the seen and the unseen. People will see money going into stadiums, people spending their dollars at the stadium and going to the games and buying food. What people don't see is that, really, it's just a transfer from locals. Instead of spending their money on movies or going out to eat, they're going to a sports game. So it looks like it's generating a lot of money. And politicians love it because everyone seems to like sports.

Q: Taxpayers who are sometimes not even in the area where the stadium is located are on the hook for this.

A: Right...