gather around their televisions
surrounded by loved ones, to watch the Big Game.
And the pinnacle event of the
most profitable sports league in the world
is more often than not played in a new state-of-the-art stadium
with super-sized digital displays
retractable roofs
luxurious box seats and suites.
Teams generally earn the lion's share of the revenue from the stadium.
But for 28 of the 32 teams
it's the taxpayers in the team's host city who paid to build it.
If the privately owned teams earn the stadium's revenue
why are they built with public money?
A new NFL stadium is being built nearly every year
and their price tags are reaching into the billions.
This chart shows all the different home fields
NFL teams have played in since 1960.
Stadiums built in the '70s and '80s
have lasted, on average, over 30 years.
But now a stadium's lifespan may be less than two decades
Washington's owner started asking for a new stadium
back when FedEx Field was only 17 years old.
Though some stadiums, like the Giants/Jets
MetLife Stadium are built with 100% private financing
public tax dollars have financed the vast majority
of NFL stadiums built in the last 20 years.
That's over 7 billion in public money going towards
building and renovating NFL stadiums.
NFL owners argue that a new stadium
will generate new construction jobs while the venue is being built
all the new spending from ticket sales, hotels, parking, tourism
would cascade into the community, the wider area
and would create a boom in the local economy
I asked an urban planning economist if stadiums really are a good public investment.
Most of the stadiums we have built in United States,
they do not provide any positive impact - most of them.
What else you could have done with this money?
Let's say they are raising 200 million dollar and there is investing in a stadium.
Instead of doing that, if they spend that money on roads,
infrastructure, shopping malls, or public parks.
Things that benefit the whole public, not just football fans.
For team owners, new stadiums mean millions more in profits.
They sell the name of the stadium to other corporations,
host the Super Bowl,
and owners maximize revenue by building more and more luxury suites
and club seating in the place of general admission seats.
Over a third of the seats are premium in the Cowboys' 82,000 seat stadium
and a luxury suite can cost as much as $30,000 per game.
The push for new stadiums comes down to increasing
profits for the owners, but cities try to meet these demands because there's more
to a football franchise than the bottom line.
Residents want teams and the
hometown pride that comes with it.
Even for people who never attended a game
there's a shared experience, a collective enthusiasm for the home team.
In one poll three-quarters of Indiananpolis citizens
said losing the city's NFL team would hurt the city
compared to 68% who said it would
hurt to lose all the city's museums.
This is coming from a city and state that funded 86% of their new stadium
even though the previous stadium still owes millions in debt.
Team owners, they have successfully tied this stadium
to a civic pride. And that's why
When cities refuse to build new stadiums
owners threaten to move their teams to somewhere that will.
That's what happened in 2016 to St. Louis
and 2017 to San Diego and Oakland.
New stadiums aren't the economic powerhouses owners promise they'll be.
But as long as there are more cities that want a home team than there are franchises,
it looks like the taxpayers are gonna keep footing the bill.