Excavating for a mine
Nov. 10th, 2006 04:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cyranoAnd while I'm reading the paper, which is alternately full of stories about Nancy Pelosi and the 49ers, can somebody tell me why San Francisco should be desperate to hold onto a professional sports team?
It is my impression that (whatever it might have been like forty years ago) now a city makes millions or billions of dollars in concessions--through building new stadia or forfeiture of property taxes or any number of other toothsome bonuses--to a sport club or some other city makes those offers, and then the citizens end up footing a huge bill for what does not seem to me to be a good financial return.
Is it just the prestige of being able to say 'We host a professional sports team'? Or is there some hidden benefit that I'm not seeing here?
(As an aside, I am ambivalent. If the 49ers move to Santa Clara then we inherit all the traffic and chaos and stupid which I expect will bloat geometrically with the Great America traffic and chaos and stupid. If the 49ers stay in San Francisco then there's a chance we'll end up with the 2016 Olympics, and the traffic and the chaos and the stupid.)
It is my impression that (whatever it might have been like forty years ago) now a city makes millions or billions of dollars in concessions--through building new stadia or forfeiture of property taxes or any number of other toothsome bonuses--to a sport club or some other city makes those offers, and then the citizens end up footing a huge bill for what does not seem to me to be a good financial return.
Is it just the prestige of being able to say 'We host a professional sports team'? Or is there some hidden benefit that I'm not seeing here?
(As an aside, I am ambivalent. If the 49ers move to Santa Clara then we inherit all the traffic and chaos and stupid which I expect will bloat geometrically with the Great America traffic and chaos and stupid. If the 49ers stay in San Francisco then there's a chance we'll end up with the 2016 Olympics, and the traffic and the chaos and the stupid.)
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no subject
Date: 2006-11-11 02:42 am (UTC)I think a large portion of it is political, given that losing/gaining a sports team makes politicians responsible look either very good or very bad, so I don't think it's economic, I think it's political.
As for the traffic, better the 49ers and ~10 days of stupid traffic, mostly on Sundays, rather than a baseball team there, with 80+ days of stupid traffic.