publicly financed stadiums

The Braves Will Wring An Extra $30 Million Out Of Taxpayers For Traffic Control

The Atlanta Braves began this season playing in a shiny new stadium located out in Cobb County. The new ballpark cost local taxpayers nearly $400 million, and at one point, the county was forced to raise taxes to pay for public parks because they’d overpaid so severely for the stadium, which is already seeing…

Vikings' New Stadium Struggling With Leaky Walls, Loose Panels

Less than a year after it opened, the Vikings’ new stadium has leaky walls and loose panels with no clear plan for scheduling or funding repairs, according to reporting by the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

This Is The Saddest Attempted Stadium Grift I've Ever Seen

Earlier this week, the NCAA announced that the men’s and women’s basketball tournaments will be returning in 2022 to Cincinnati, Ohio, for the first time in over 30 years. The bid to bring back first- and second-round games was won by the owners of the former Riverfront Coliseum, the largest indoor venue in…

Florida's Go-To Stadium Economist Is A Hack, A Shill, And Also Not An Economist

If you are even a casual Deadspin reader, you know a couple of truths: Stadiums and arenas provide little-to-no economic benefit to their communities, and studies written to support public funding for stadiums and arenas are almost universally bogus. Tampa CBS-affiliate WTSP found a frightening collision of these two…

St. Louis Citizens Reject Paying For An MLS Stadium

St. Louis is one of 12 cities vying a spot in the next round of MLS expansion, which will see four new teams join the league over the next few years. Sacramento is virtually assured a spot, despite some wild ownership shenanigans, which means that the other cities up for a spot face stiffer competition than the odds…

Oakland Taxpayers Will Still Be On The Hook For $163 Million After The Raiders And Warriors Leave

When the city of Oakland brought the Raiders back from Los Angeles in 1995, then-mayor Elihu Harris enticed Al Davis with $200 million in improvements to the Oakland Coliseum. The city paid for the construction with taxpayer-backed bonds, and their initial plan was to pay off the bond by selling personal seat licenses…

The FBI Is Now Investigating Hartford's Disaster Of A Minor-League Stadium Deal

The Rockies’ Double-A affiliate in Hartford, Conn. has run into plenty of problems since deciding to build a taxpayer-funded ballpark two years ago, including but not limited to lawsuits and construction delays. Here’s a new one: an FBI probe into how public money has been spent on the new park.