Dollars and Sense of Pro Sports

The City of Charlotte gave the NBA expansion Bobcats $300 million for a new arena. No, we didn’t hand them a check, but we are building the arena for them and they get to reside in it, operate it and even keep the profits from it.

Charlotte is now wanting to pony up nearly $140 million to build a NASCAR hall of fame here in town. This one almost makes sense compared to the arena. At least it can reasonably be expected to generate the city some money, as well as perhaps keep the races we do have.

Individual athletes are signing deals worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and this doesn’t even include the millions more that are demanded – and given – for endorsing a given product.

And all the while, sports owners are crying foul because they have to pay the ever-increasing demands of these “superstars”, and to make ends meet, they in turn jack up the price of tickets for the fans.

So not only are we paying the increased price at the turnstile, we pay to park at the game, we pay insane prices at the concession stand and we even pay higher taxes to finance these sports. How does this make sense?


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3 responses to “Dollars and Sense of Pro Sports”

  1. Tyler Avatar
    Tyler

    Why would you ever pay 300 million dollars on a sports arena??? when you could actually do something useful with the money.

  2. Ted Avatar

    I’ve never understood why governments build stadiums, but they do. It is possible to make a case that incresased revenues from the business the stadium generates my pay back the investment, but I’ve not seen the numbers to verify that theory.

  3. Reb Orrell Avatar

    Chad,

    You’ve basically answered your own question. It does not make any sense at all. The salaries they receive are out of sight. On top of that, many of them act like idiots and are horrible to the fans. I understand that is the big edge NASCAR has. They are great to the fans from what I understand.