LOS ANGELES is by far the biggest market missing a team from one of America’s three major sports: football, baseball and basketball (see chart). Having gone 21 years without a National Football League (NFL) team, it has suddenly been graced with three suitors: the St Louis Rams, the San Diego Chargers and the Oakland Raiders, though it will have to settle for just two. The Rams and Raiders used to call it home, but left in 1995 when the cities of St Louis and Oakland offered them taxpayer money to help cover their stadium costs, an act of generosity they must now be regretting. On January 12th the NFL announced that the first team headed for Los Angeles would be the St Louis Rams.
According to The Tax Payers Protection Alliance, an NGO, 29 out of 31 NFL stadiums have received public subsidies to help cover construction and renovation costs since 1995. NFL teams argue that this is justified because their presence drives consumer spending, but the academic literature says otherwise: economists argue that in the absence of sports teams, consumers would simply spend their money on other forms of entertainment. Any public subsidies for...Continue reading
Source: United States http://ift.tt/1RPVhfz
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