Just say no...

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...to publicly financed sports stadiums that primarily benefit wealthy team owners. Seattle did:
SEATTLE, Nov. 12 — Empowered by a wave of venture capital, a hiring boom and pride in its homegrown billionaires, this city has decided it no longer needs a mediocre professional basketball team to feel good about itself.

On Election Day, residents rebuffed their once-beloved Seattle SuperSonics, voting overwhelmingly for a ballot measure ending public subsidies for professional sports teams.
I'm glad to see cities refusing to kowtow to the extravagant demands of team owners. "Gimmie this and this and that or we're taking the team somewhere else." The whole racket reminds me of those awful Indian dowry extortion stories you heard about a while back. (The woman who famously resisted a dowry extortion attempt has now married someone else.)

Comments

AutismNewsBeat said…
That's what happened in Milwaukee about five years ago. The powers that be decided the city needed to replace County Stadium, because the only thing the stadium was good for was playing baseball, and watching baseball being played. So they tore it down, and built a $400 million retractable dome stadium with luxury sky boxes and restaurants. Attendance jumped the first year, and then fell to the same levels as before. Meanwhile, residents in a four county area are paying a .5% sales tax for the stadium.

Oh, and did I mention that Bud Selig sucks?
7:49 PM, November 14, 2006
Zachary Drake said…
Bummer, man. Sometimes it seems that capitalism is the science of externalizing costs to the public and profit to oneself. When government throws their lot in with the wealthy, the people are screwed. I hope cities have learned their lessons.
1:03 AM, November 15, 2006
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