Government Funding for Athletic Stadiums

When watching many sporting events throughout the week, one may notice all
of the beautiful stadiums and facilites that these games or contests are
being played at. Some of these venues are historic and have a lot if
history in them, such as Fenway Park for the Boston Red Sox, Wrigley Field
for the Chicago Cubs, Lambeau Field, home of the Green Bay Packers, Soldier
Field, home of the Chicago Bears, Madison Square Garden for the New York
Knicks, and many others that can be thought of as well. There are also many
new and very modern and state of the art venues that teams compete at now a
days as well. Some examples include Nationals Park, home of the Washington
Nationals, the University of Phoenix Stadium, which plays host to the
Arizona Cardinals, and Cisco Field, home of the Oakland Athletics, as well
as many other teams and universities that are in the planning or building
stages for new stadiums as well, like the new Yankee Stadium and City Bank
Park, which will play host to the New York Mets next season. The
debate that is heating up about these stadiums is whether or not the
cities in which they are built should have to provide funding to build
the stadiums or should the teams themselves have to pay for all of the
building.

If a professional athletic team is going to put their name on a
stadium and call it theirs, doesn't it only seem fair that they then
pay for all of the funding needed to build the stadium? I can
understand a city paying a team, or giving them incentives, to come
and build their stadiums in a certain city, if it is what the citizens
of that city want, but to pay for a large quanitity of the total cost
of the new stadium is just crazy. There are many other things that
the tax payers of that city can be using their money for besides
helping to fund millions of dollars in a stadium, that many of the
citizens may never go to a single game at. For instance, the city of
Arlington, Texas has paid over $325 million for the building of the $1
billion dollar stadium (Star-Telegram.com), and the city of New York
has paid over $350 million of the $1.3 billion project which is due to
be completed by next season. (WORLD Magazine). Should the citizens of
these cities be responsible for paying their tax money and putting it
toward a state of the art stadium as these, or should they be using
all of that revenue for something that is better for the economy in
their city? I don't think that the city shold be responsible at all
for providing funding for these venues. The teams themselves have
enough money and funding coming in that they can afford the expence of
these new stadiums. If at the time that a team wants a new stadium
they can't afford the expense, they should have to wait and save the
proper funds to build a new stadiums. It is crazy to think that these
big teams with millions and billions of dollars in profit and budget
should make these cities pay for their billion dollar stadiums and
venues.

Making a city pay millions and millions of dollars in tax revenue to
go toward a new stadium for a team in the city is a lot to ask of
cities these days with they way the economy is going. The cities
should be able to spend tax revenue in other ways than to be forced to
put it toward the building of a team's stadium. The teams are who is
making the big money off of these stadiums anyway. The teams get
money from the tickets, concessions, programs, and anything else that
can be sold at a sporting event. With all the money that a team can
make from each game, it might only take a few years to save for a new
stadium, instead of wanting go build a new one right away and asking
for the city and its citizens to pay millions of dollars for the
building costs. I think that cities and their citizens should stay
all out of the funding for these stadiums, and the teams should be
held responsible for the funding for their own stadiums. They are the
ones that are going to use them and play games there, so they should
be the ones that have to pay for the building costs of them.