They Play, You Pay is a detailed, sometimes irreverent look at a
political conundrum: despite evidence that publicly funded ballparks,
stadiums, and arenas do not generate net economic growth, governments
keep on taxing sales, restaurant patrons, renters of automobiles, and
hotel visitors in order to build ever more elaborate cathedrals of
professional sport--often in order to satisfy an owner who has
threatened to move his team to greener, more subsidy-happy, pastures.
This book is a sweeping survey of the literature in the field, the
history of such subsidies, the politics of stadium construction and
franchise movement, and the prospects for a re-priva-ti-zation of
ballpark and stadium financing. It ties together disparate strands in a
fascinating story, examining the often colorful cases through which
governments became involved in sports. These range from the well-known
to the obscure--from Yankee Stadium and the Astrodome to the Brooklyn
Dodgers' move to Los Angeles (to a privately built ballpark constructed
upon land that had been seized via eminent domain from a mostly
Mexican-American population) to such arrant giveaways as Cowboys
Stadium. It examines alternatives that might lessen the pressure for
public subsidies, whether the Green Bay Packers model (in which the
team's owners are local stockholders) or via league expan-sions. It also
takes a look at little-known, yet significant, episodes such as
President Theodore Roosevelt's intervention in the collegiate football
crisis of 1905--a move that indirectly put the federal government on the
side of such basic rule changes as the legalization of the forward pass.
They Play, You Play is a fresh look at a political and economic
puzzle: how it came to be that Joe and Jane Sixpack in the Bronx and
Dallas subsidize the Steinbrenners and Jerry Joneses of professional
sport.
