ARE STADIUMS ECONOMIC POLICY, OR NOSTALGIA?
Baseball may not hurt an area, but publicly financed stadiums wind up costing more than they are worth, according to two economics professors who studied the results of stadiums built in 30 cities over 25 years. A ballpark built with public money costs a citys individual taxpayers between $10 and $40 per year, according to professors Dennis Coates and Brad Humphreys of the University of Maryland Baltimore County. That’s money just to build the stadium, Coates said, it doesn’t include paying to actually attend games or watch them on TV or buy caps and T-shirts. Proponents of publicly financed stadiums tend to rely on consultant reports that Coates said are “almost always bought and paid for” by stadium supporters. Those reports greatly exaggerate the economic benefits, he said, sometimes claiming that a new stadium will generate twice as much money as it cost to build. In fact, he said, the most a publicly financed ballpark can hope to profit a community is about 20 cents for every doll
