The Broncos' John Elway DOESN'T Believe In Safety Nets. Like the NFL's TAX-EXEMPT STATUS?

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4. "...Easterbrook says he's heard this argument before that stadiums boost local economies...

....But he says it doesn't stand up to scrutiny. He says investment in infrastructure like roads and bridges "has a multiplier effect every day of the year." Spending on stadiums, on the other hand, "has a multiplier effect 10 or 12 days of the year."

"In terms of civic investment, football makes no sense at all not only its lack of multiplier effect on the local economy, but far more importantly, all the owners are billionaires," he says. "It can pay for its own stadiums."

Compared to similar businesses, NFL stadiums pay little or no property taxes.

"Research shows that about 70 percent of the cost of building and operating the NFL stadiums has been paid for by the public," Easterbrook says. "I estimate if you roll it all together subsidies, tax favors etc. it's roughly a billion dollars a year."

Take the MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, which will host this year's Super Bowl. Easterbrook says comparable businesses pay about $20 million a year in local property taxes.

"It pays $6 million a year through a political agreement that exempted the billionaire ownership families of the Jets and Giants that jointly own that stadium from the kind of taxes that are paid by mere average people," he says.

But not giving in to subsidy requests could also be a bad political move.

Easterbrook points to Minnesota, where the family that owns the Vikings threatened to leave a year ago and convinced the state Legislature to spend millions on a new facility. Easterbrook doubts the team actually would have left, but he says the governor had essentially two options: "One, he can say, 'I'm the man who kept the Vikings in Minnesota;' or maybe if they left ... then he would have been blamed for losing the Vikings...."


http://www.gpb.org/news/2014/01/19/the-nfl-big-business-with-big-tax-breaks