American Cities Held Hostage - Article Review by Abby Pasmowitz

In this article, American Cities Held Hostage: Public Stadiums and Pro Sports

Franchises, written by David Schein, James Phillips & Caroline Rider, it is explained in great detail how adding sports facilities to a community can be more costly on the taxpayers of that community than it is economically beneficial for everyone overall. For years, team owners have been creating sale pitches that allow them to build a stadium with taxpayer dollars because that is the only way they’ll see any profit. While a new facility opens up new jobs and increases tourism, the average lifespan of a facility is only 30 years and almost never makes back a net profit of how much was originally spent to build the stadium in the first place. On top of this, multi-use stadiums are a dying trend. Sports teams no longer want to share an arena with other teams and vendors, they would prefer their own in order to make max profit. This is extremely counterproductive when it comes to trying to conserve money and leads to having to get stadiums publicly funded by taxpayers.

Although taxpayers are paying the majority of the bill, they have no say in how their money gets distributed. For instance, when the Marlins decided to build a new stadium in 2008, $347 million dollars in public funds was used to construct it. Although adding a stadium to Dade County, Florida would be profitable, 100% of non-baseball revenue is also going to the Marlins. This leaves no room for taxpayers to earn their money back. And ironically, ever since their stadium opened, the Marlins have had poor ticket sales in comparison to years prior. The reason this is such a pressing issue is because this money could be spent towards educational systems, housing for the poor and elderly,

healthcare, and more but instead it is being used toward a facility that most taxpayers will never even visit.

All the research stated in the article is extremely beneficial. I think it is extremely unknown how much and whose money goes into making these facilities, and if they are truly beneficial to the community. The examples used throughout the article are real examples that leave no room for question. For example, U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, MN, home of the Minnesota Vikings, is listed at costing around 1 billion dollars. NASA’s new satellite and 10-year trip to Pluto doesn’t even cost that much. One of the primary goals for this research is to take a look at the financial fallout and public funding that goes into these massive, multi-billion dollar projects. The outcomes are critical for several parties from the team, the physical stadium itself, the league of the team, the city, and its taxpayers. When it comes to building stadiums, the team owners always end up on top. They receive new and improved revenue streams from ticket sales and team value goes up exponentially. They go about their business in several ways and they need to gain public interest and approval to continue with stadium construction. In many cases, team owners are known for aligning with and reaching out to local and regional lawmakers, politicians, and other sources of local power. Most of the time someone with local power is someone with wealth to their name. Regardless if they are related to the sport or not, it is very common for team owners to recruit people with wealth and connections to attract free publicity. The more relevant a connection that the stadium has, the more the stadium will be visited and talked about. For instance, the restaurant Chickie and Petes is chain throughout Philadelphia, the suburbs of Philadelphia, and South Jersey. This is one of the most talked about

restaurants in the area and there are only 19 of them across a little under a 50,000 mile radius. The fact that Citizens Bank Park, home of the Philadelphia Phillies, has a Chickie and Petes vendor, is a major connection and a main attraction for fans attending the game.

Sport team owners use a variety of tactics to market and build up their project proposals for the city, the state board, and to the greater public and citizens of the city and state. Owners often persuade the public with huge promises such as bringing in new jobs, increased tourism, increased overall hospitality sales, a new cornerstone for the city as both an attraction and a destination, and to give the city a new shining gem to have as their own and be proud of to represent their city. The article succeeded at highlighting this in the study. Owners strategize and center their main focus around gaining momentum, building steam, and earning support from nearby sources of power. Aligning with powerful figures such as big businesses, local figures, and nationally-recognized people will gain more credibility and influence from the taxpayers of the city.

To fix or even begin to endure this issue, the entire governmental system would have to be reevaluated. The core problem is that taxpayers do not get a say in what their tax dollars go towards. Until they do, team owners, big corporations, and people of the upper class will continue to create these facilities with the excuse that it is beneficial for the city, but only worrying about their profit in the long run. Even if the taxpayers did have a say, “... the politicians think that they know better and the outcome will justify the disregard of the voters.” When the Marlins wanted to use public funds to build a new stadium, Norman Braman sued with the reasoning that building the stadium would

violate the Florida constitution considering the stadium's revenue would really only benefit a private entity. Although this is completely valid, the court ruled that “... a public purpose would be served since a public body had determined that it was in the public interest to finance the stadium.” Again, this is disregarding the fact that the Marlins are still receiving 100% of all non-baseball revenue.

If every team owner bought their own stadium with their own money and paid the proper taxes, taxpayers would still be paying the same amount of money each year but the other aspects of the community would begin to flourish. A team owner has every opportunity to make their money back once the stadium is built and open to the public. Between parking, advertisements, venues (such as private events and concerts), food, tickets sales, and merchandise it is definitely possible to make net profit. Sports owners have so many different sources of revenue to be earned on gameday. They know this and because of this, they look to create an advantage for themselves in the situation. Team owners can manipulate the public and help coerce public opinion by building a marquee with impressive food, seating, parking, and ticket options. Team owners are further creating and enhancing the gameday experience for fans and stakeholders alike. On top of that, radio and TV stations pay a large sum of money to broadcast the games on their station. These deals often come out to be worth millions of dollars locally for the team and league wide deals for media and TV deals often reach the multi-billion dollar threshold. This is just another way that professional sport team owners gain easy money.

In Defense of Sports Antitrust Law: Article Review Abby Pasmowitz

The article, In Defense of Sports Antitrust Law: Response to Law Review Articles Calling for the Administrative Regulation of Commercial Sports by Marc Edelman, discusses the importance of the antitrust law and the issues that can arise when the law is broken or not applied to certain situations. The term antitrust describes any contract or settlement that prevents a competitive market from occurring. When it comes to commercial sports, the ultimate goal is to entertain the consumer. If the consumer is not entertained, there is no way for organizations to benefit economically. If they cannot benefit economically, they cannot run. For instance, If one NBA team had the top five best players in the league, games involving that team would no longer be exciting to watch because they would be too predictable. The team with the top five best players would dominate the league making the other games less interesting to watch. The antitrust law prevents scenarios like that from happening. This law is necessary in order to prevent monopolies within commercial sports. If a monopoly was set in place, commercial sports would be destroyed. Instead of having 30 NBA teams, there would be around 12 teams consisting of the most elite players. This would lead to smaller programs within the collegiate level, which would lead to less resources for colleges and universities to make money off of. Not to mention, smaller programs means less scholarship money to give out which ultimately affects the rate of a proper education across the American educational system, which is already not high. Commercial sports were simply not meant to be monopolized, and if they were, they would not be nearly as

impactful as they are today. Without the antitrust law, there would be a plethora of unreasonable trades being set as well. Owners of teams, coaches, and even players often find loopholes in their contracts that would ultimately allow them to profit unprecedented amounts of money in legal, but not necessarily fair ways.

The article also touches upon labor-side antitrust litigation involving commercial sports and how in today's world there is much less of it. This is due to the fact that athletes have unionized which often leads to leagues being able to, “...avoid labor-side antitrust litigation based on the non-statutory labor exemption.” This is necessary because it protects the players' right to be treated equally despite team rankings, differences in athletic value, or anything of the sort. Just because a player adds more value, should not necessarily mean that player gets to bend the rules. The antitrust law ensures that does not happen.

However, antitrust laws have yet to be perfected. Authors Mitten, Ross, and Grow all believe that, “...the application of antitrust law to commercial sports leagues is an imperfect science based on the unique economic relationship between sports team and league over all.” While the antitrust law does not make perfect sense, it is still the most practical and logical way to go about protecting commercial sports leagues from monopolization within the organizations. Although imperfect at times, the antitrust laws have still been able to prevent commercial sports leagues from, “... boycotting athletes, restraining player movement, and implementing extensive player drafts in the absence of a collective bargaining relationship.”

The article was written well by the authors in the sense that if the reader has an idea of what the antitrust law is, then the article is easy to understand and the examples

used turn out to be extremely relevant. Part two of the article is especially helpful towards the reader's understanding of the antitrust law in commercial sports because within the section, the author breaks down what specific instances in which the antitrust law is not useful, why, and how these instances cause conflict down the line. The example that was particularly helpful when grasping an understanding of the antitrust law in commercial sports was the Law v. NCAA example. This is a real example of when the antitrust law gets brought up to question, and within the paragraph, it is explained step by step on how a decision is made, on whether or not the antitrust law needs to be applied. The area of the article was exceptionally easy to comprehend.

To someone who does not have any prior knowledge on the subject, the article may be a little difficult to understand. For example, within part one, the article states that, “The two recent law review articles that seek to replace antitrust regulation of commercial sports with an administrative solution both come from an ethical place-the desire to align legal outcomes in commercial sports with societal interests across various stakeholder groups.” If the reader does not know what a stakeholder group is, or the effect they have on commercial sports, then this point is worthless when trying to explain the necessity of antitrust laws within commercial sports. The article does not do a great job of breaking down concepts and explaining definitions. I think it would be helpful to the reader if the author left side notes with small captions giving the definitions of uncommon phrases like stakeholder group or labor-side antitrust litigation.

From this article the reader definitely gains the understanding that these laws are put in place to prevent monopolies and promote business promotion. In order for commercial sports to provide, a healthy, competitive market must be put into place.

After reading this article it is extremely clear that antitrust laws are not only necessary but in most scenarios valid when trying to keep commercial sports appealing for the audience. WIthout antitrust laws intact, commercial sports would not have the following it does. Antitrust laws create a level or equalness across organizations and allow for an expansive market and a competitive community.

Welcome Back Carter

In last night's thriller between the Chicago Bulls and the Indiana Pacers, Wendell Carter Jr. put on a show. In his first game back from his quadricep injury, he had a tall task lining up against Domantas Sabonis. Carter was given the responsibility of defending Sabonis for the majority of the game. Although Sabonis still put up twenty five points, Carter forced him to miss many in- side shots resulting in an uncharacteristically low shooting percentage.

In the beginning of the second quarter, Carter found himself guarding Sabonis deep in the paint, causing Sabonis to miss a five-foot shot. Carter was able to gather the rebound ending the Pacers’ unsuccessful possession. Coming off such an injury, a play such as this shows Carter’s innate tenacity. For an All-Star caliber player like Sabonis, 7 for 19 is not noteworthy and missing shots so close to the basket is uncommon.

Contributing to Sabonis’ relatively poor performance were several players who were inactive for tonight's game. Due to Sabonis’ teammates being inactive, he was forced to play a larger role in this game. With a lack of fresh players throughout, Sabonis had to play the majority of his 43 minutes on the floor in a fatigued state.

When a bench player such as T.J. Warren, who averages 15 points per game, doesn’t play, it takes a toll on the rest of the team. In addition, without Warren's presence, potential points are not put on the board. The Pacers can chalk up this loss to a lethargic overall play, as well as many missed shots due to a tight Bulls defense.

Doug McDermott, one of the key inactive starters, left big shoes to fill for the bench players. McDermott has been averaging about 13 points and four rebounds a game, a relatively big loss to the Pacers offense in his absence.

Since so many players were inactive, T.J. McConnell, who normally comes off the bench, had to play a starting role in the game. Due to this change, the Pacers’ second unit became much weak- er.
“...we weren’t able to make stops, the stops that we needed...our defense is built on not allowing second chance opportunities,” said Brogdon.

On the contrary, the exact opposite took place. This led to the Pacers downfall in overtime and allowed the Bulls to convert a few second chance opportunities into a win.

One occurrence of this took place with a little less than four minutes to go in overtime where Zach LaVine missed a three pointer, Thaddeus Young got the rebound, which eventually led to Denzel Valentine making a three-point shot. A very similar occurrence happened about a minute later where LaVine missed another three-pointer and Young was there to tip it in. It may have only happened twice, but in overtime those are momentum changing plays.

Caris Levert, who averages four rebounds and six assists per game, is one of many reasons why the pacers defense was not what they would expect this game. When Levert was originally traded to the Pacers his initial use was to bulk up the defensive presence. With his absence, it is quite evident that his abilities are quite useful to the Pacers defense.

“...we couldn’t make that one big shot to get us over the hump....we couldn’t that one stop ei- ther” said McConnell.

The lack of active players which resulted in sluggishness within the overall team could be a con- tributing factor to what McConnell previously stated.

From here on out, Nate Bjorkgren’s plans is to:

“...play with our pace and be more consistent with it.... we’re better when T.J. is throwing it down the floor and Malcolm is pushing it ahead, we're better at that pace, we just missed it tonight.”

It truly seems as if it weren’t for Carter’s fresh comeback and the amount of inactive players this team had, maybe Sabonis would have been able to carry his team to a win. Bjorkgren did admit himself, “I thought the outcome would be very very different.”