ads to a political reaction against sports subsidies. Stadium politics has proven to be quite controversial in some cities. Some citizens apparently know that teams do little for the local economy and are concerned about using regressive sales taxes and lottery revenues to subsidize wealthy players, owners, and executives. Voters rejected public support for stadiums on ballot initiatives in Milwaukee, San Francisco, San Jose, and Seattle, although no team has failed to obtain a new stadium. Still, more guarded, conditional support from constituents can cause political leaders to be more careful in negotiating a stadium deal. Initiatives that place more of the financial burden on facility users--via revenues from luxury or club boxes, personal seat licenses (PSLs), naming rights, and ticket taxes--are likely to be more popular. Unfortunately, citizen resistance notwithstanding, most stadiums probably cannot be financed primarily from private sources. In the first place, the use of money from PSLs, naming rights, pouring rights, and other private sources is a matter to be negotiated among teams, cities, and leagues. The charges imposed by the NFL on the Raiders and Rams when they moved to Oakland and St. Louis, respectively, were an attempt by the league to capture some of this (unshared) revenue, rather than have it pay for the stadium. Second, revenue from private sources is not likely to be enough to avoid large public subsidies. In the best circumstance, like the NFL's Charlotte Panthers, local governments still pay for investments in supporting infrastructure, and Washington still pays an interest subsidy for the local government share. And the Charlotte case is unique. No other stadium project has raised as much private revenue. At the other extreme is the disaster in Oakland, where a supposedly break-even financial plan left the community $70 million in the hole because of cost overruns and disappointing PSL sales. Third, despite g...
