Yah, well, duuuuuuhhhhh!
In the three years after moving into Miller Park in 2001, the Milwaukee Brewers made a yearly economic impact of $327.3 million on the five-county area that was taxed to build the ballpark, according to a study by the Institute for Survey and Policy Research at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
The study, which local public relations firm Mueller Communications Inc. commissioned on behalf of Major League Baseball and the Brewers, was completed in January 2005.
But Marc Levine, director of the Center for Economic Development, said academic studies on the impact of stadiums around the country have concluded that "spending on sports stadiums and teams is not a positive economic investment for communities."
Specifically, Levine cited the work of Dennis Coates, a sports economist with the University of Maryland at Baltimore County. Coates reviewed decades of spending on sports stadiums around the country and concluded that they were associated with declining per-capita income.
"Our conclusion, and that of nearly all academic economists studying this issue, is that professional sports generally have little, if any, positive effect on a city's economy," Coates and Brad Humphreys wrote in a report issued in 2004.
"Stick It To 'Em"!!!
Doh!
ReplyDeleteI think a crucial point from such analyses of sports centers' impact that may not be clear is that new stadiums and such do not bring in "new" money -- that is, money that wouldn't be spent on entertainment in Milwaukee, anyway.
ReplyDeleteThe studies find that it is money that would be spent on other forms of entertainment in Milwaukee -- other sports, movies, Summerfest, State Fair, etc.
Consumers have just so much money left to spend on entertainment after taxes, mortgage or rent, food, and other necessities. So they spend just what they have for entertainment in some form -- if not on baseball, then on something else.
But consumers do not suddenly find extra money and say, "Ain'a hey, let's go to Milwaukee and spend this on baseball!"