Stadiums Are A Bad Investment

So argue Pat Garofalo and Travis Waldron:

"The basic idea is that sports stadiums typically aren't a good tool for economic development," said Victor Matheson, an economist at Holy Cross who has studied the economic impact of stadium construction for decades. When cities cite studies (often produced by parties with an interest in building the stadium) touting the impact of such projects, there is a simple rule for determining the actual return on investment, Matheson said: "Take whatever number the sports promoter says, take it and move the decimal one place to the left. Divide it by ten, and that's a pretty good estimate of the actual economic impact."

Waldron later adds:

If taxpayers knew the real cost of stadiums, they might choose to keep paying for police officers, firefighters, and other public services instead of spending $4 billion on professional sports facilities. Or maybe they wouldn’t. Maybe fandom is such that we would still prioritize a sparkling new arena or stadium even while we’re cutting those services. The point is, we don’t know, because we never get that discussion.