Major League Losers: The Real Cost Of Sports And Who's Paying For It - Hardcover

Rosentraub, Mark S.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 046508317X ISBN 13: 9780465083176

Publisher: Basic Books, 1996

Synopsis

A welfare system exists in this country that transfers hundreds of millions of dollars from taxpayers to individuals who hardly require government assistance. State and local officials, mesmerized by vague promises and starry-eyed visions of the future, cave in to ever escalating demands from the system's beneficiaries, without ever finding out whether the public is served by such policies. It's a scandal, really, and reform is long overdue if we are to rein in the abuses perpetrated by ... America's professional sports franchises. Major League Losers is a clarion call that exposes the system by which American cities and states shell out scarce tax dollars to subsidize the expenses of wealthy team owners and their extraordinarily well-paid employees. New stadiums and arenas are built at public expense, but municipalities are regularly shut out from sharing in the profits they generate. Sweetheart deals, negotiated under the threat of a team leaving town, result in many owners receiving land, investment opportunities, luxury suites, prime office space, and practice facilities—all financed by the taxpayers.Mark S. Rosentraub, a leading analyst of the economic impacts of sports on urban areas, has studied the truth behind the claims routinely made by mayors, team owners, and the media, and he has discovered that major league sports have no more than a minuscule impact on the economy of a city or region. They produce few jobs, little tax revenue, and a negligible positive impact even on their own immediate neighborhood. In these times of tight budgets, Rosentraub shows that the current system wastes a colossal amount of public money that Americans cannot afford, and his pointed critique provides government officials and taxpayers with a clearer understanding of how cities can, and should, negotiate with sports franchises to protect the true public good.

About this title

About the Author:

Mark S. Rosentraub is professor and associate dean in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University at Indianapolis, and is director of the Center for Urban Policy and the Environment. He lives in Indianapolis.

From Kirkus Reviews:

This dense and sometimes difficult financial analysis leads to easily understood and sensible conclusions about the business of sports. Rosentraub (of the Center for Urban Policy and the Environment at Indiana Univ.) is an avid sports fan who concedes the substantial intangible benefits a city can reap from a successful sports franchise. The goal of this exhaustive study, however, is to demonstrate that, economically, cities that spend millions to attract these franchises come out barely even or, more often, wind up deep in the hole. Rosentraub studies the finances of stadium projects in such cities as Indianapolis, Cleveland, St. Louis, Toronto, and Montreal. Indianapolis, for instance, tried to revitalize its sleepy image and its deteriorating downtown through a multipronged strategy of attracting both professional and amateur athletic activity. But in the end it merely demonstrated Rosentraub's claim that sports is too small a part of any city's economy to generate much growth in terms of jobs and income, nor do profits spill over into other businesses in the community. Team owners, he argues, blackmail cities into huge ``welfare'' subsidies that ``transfer . . . wealth from the lower and middle classes to the upper class.'' They are able to do so because ``sports cartels'' insure that ``the number of cities that want teams exceeds the supply,'' thus setting off bidding wars among locales. Rosentraub's solution: End the cartels, get the government out of sports, and let the free market rule. Acknowledging the substantial obstacles to such obvious but radical remedies, he argues that taxpayers at the least must demand to know who pays and who profits, and then decide just how much the intangible benefits of sports are worth. Every New Yorker, especially Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, must read this book before agreeing to a billion-dollar-plus stadium for the Yankees. Ditto for other cities contemplating the construction of a new stadium. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Basic Books
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 046508317X
• ISBN 13: 9780465083176
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 528