Aww, a lot of STL Rams fans seem to think that throwing public money to build a stadium will make money for the state, city, and locality. I had posted to Alderman French that public money shouldn’t go to any stadium financing at all - after all it’s a subsidy to a billionaire who doesn’t need it. And there’s all the issues with the fact that the NFL schedules a grand total of 8 regular season games at home each year. That leaves a facility with 350+ days being empty and the need to fill it with gigs.

STL already has an existing stadium suitable for the purpose. The owner wants a new stadium and threatens a move. So, I’ve got a bunch of ppl tweeting that the subsidies make sense, that the money should be spent, and that there aren’t better uses of the money.

[facepalm]

Public subsidies of sports stadiums is a huge waste of taxpayer funds. Heck, there are stadiums that no longer in use where taxpayers are still on the hook, including the Astrodome, the Kingdome, and Giants Stadium among others. Giants Stadium debt is still being repaid, even though it was torn down. Ditto for the Kingdome (which finally retired its debt 15 years after the stadium was imploded!).

Economists keep finding that the money for sports stadiums takes away from other more valuable projects, and that the economic impact is minimal (as we saw with the Super Bowl in NJ, there was no measurable economic bump - and the costs were significant, including higher NJ Transit costs, security costs, and the NFL demanded and got sales tax breaks).