Are the Weavers hedging their bets?

[JeffreyS]

I've never understood the logic behind how getting people to come watch a football game then immediately go home does much of anything. Other than a one-day increase in traffic at gas stations hotels and some restaurants, the entire economic impact is sucked up by the team operation itself, and contained within the stadium concessions and vendors, e.g. does not go to local businesses. As far as 'promoting the city' how many people decide to open businesses here just because they watched a football game here? Come on, that is just vague language meant to give the impression of importance and a false justification to what is in reality a negative/parasitic economic impact.

The real reason everyone wants an NFL team here is ego and entertainment. And that's fine, but call it a spade.

I like the Jags, and am glad we have an NFL team. But I'm not delusional, I don't think for a minute it pays for itself.

+1, Chris. 

There have been a lot of economic studies done on the impact of building stadiums with public money to attract professional sports teams.  At best the economic impact is neutral, but usually it is actually a negative impact on the community.

Except for the feel good factor of course.

I know you both want to trivialize the QOL factor I mentioned in the original post which may be true for you but believe me when I say it adds much to most of the citizens living here.

We were maintaining a stadium for big events FL/GA , Gator bowl ect that was going to be defunct one day and need to be replaced.  We have attracted other big events and so on and so forth. 

The NFL is the corporate league in this country and Jacksonville is in many a corporate conversation. I know you can't tell some Republicans that tickets sales on the Train are not the only factor and by the same token you can't tell some of my fellow progressive that Jags tickets are not the only factor at Everbank Field however both positions are naive. I know you two were taking other things into account but if you do not think the Jags are worth it in local ego and enjoyment you would be very wrong.  Things often complained about on this site are Jacksonville's self image and what to do for fun.

Look at what gets the biggest TV ratings in this area to find out what the locals are most invested in. (hint the colors are teal, Black and gold)

[JeffreyS]

Let's not forget we also brought the most benevolent citizens Jacksonville has ever had to town the Weavers with the Jags.

[ChriswUfGator]

1: The weavers are nice people. That's not what this is about.

2: If I give you $100mm and you give me back $10mm, am I really being charitable?

3: QOL is a fancy name for the ego and entertainment justification for taxpayer funding of a private sports business.

I already acknowledged that back in my first post, but that's a different thing than claiming it pays for itself. It doesn't.

[JeffreyS]

1. Ok.
2. I think they are we did not just hand them the cash to them personally.
3. Call it ego and entertainment instead of QOL and I do not care if it is sports, arts or other if we get the bang for the buck of making most local citizens life more enjoyable to me it is justified.

Finally I do not know that it pays for itself quick internet search showed arguments both ways. I do think what we are paying for we are getting what we pay for.

[PeeJayEss]

1: The weavers are nice people. That's not what this is about.

2: If I give you $100mm and you give me back $10mm, am I really being charitable?

3: QOL is a fancy name for the ego and entertainment justification for taxpayer funding of a private sports business.

I already acknowledged that back in my first post, but that's a different thing than claiming it pays for itself. It doesn't.

I believe you mean "are you really being charitable," but in any case I would say yes. The govt gave money to your business (which isn't at all true but let's go with that anyway) because it thought it could benefit in some way. Then you take some of your personal money and give that to some other organization (zoo, whatever). "Charity" doesn't require you to give away more than you bring in. Giving $10mil is charitable whether you've got $100mil or $1bil. And if you look at all the things that result from having an NFL team (jobs, food and merchandise production, the gas station, restaurant, and hotel dollars you wrote off, a tiny bit of public transit used, the thousands of people that watch the game at the bars around town, fees collected from speeding tickets written on people who are driving somewhere for the game, fees paid to bail rowdy fans out of jail, airplane fair, etc etc), I don't see how you are not benefiting. Not to mention the several dozen wealthy individuals (Jag players) that are forced to live and spend here at local businesses. And every-other week you're bringing in at least couple hundred people to stay in hotels and eat at restaurants (the other team, media, the chick singing the national anthem and her entourage, etc etc and some of them blow a lot of money).

Granted, the city pays X dollars to rebuild the Gator Bowl or writes off X dollars in rent and the Weavers are not writing a check for X dollars back to the city. But does anyone really expect government investment to be that straightforward? You really have to examine every collateral aspect of the industry to give it a fair accounting of ROI. But I certainly think they could be doing better, especially with downtown retention of game attendees. Some of these examples are obviously ridiculous, but the benefits are truly far reaching.

Then there's all the stuff that impossible to quantify. The team certainly makes Jacksonville more of a national city. They're a big part of the reason that people think "Florida," and not one of the 49 other states with a Jacksonville, when they hear "Jacksonville."

What was this thread about?

[ChriswUfGator]

1: The weavers are nice people. That's not what this is about.

2: If I give you $100mm and you give me back $10mm, am I really being charitable?

3: QOL is a fancy name for the ego and entertainment justification for taxpayer funding of a private sports business.

I already acknowledged that back in my first post, but that's a different thing than claiming it pays for itself. It doesn't.

I believe you mean "are you really being charitable," but in any case I would say yes. The govt gave money to your business (which isn't at all true but let's go with that anyway) because it thought it could benefit in some way. Then you take some of your personal money and give that to some other organization (zoo, whatever). "Charity" doesn't require you to give away more than you bring in. Giving $10mil is charitable whether you've got $100mil or $1bil. And if you look at all the things that result from having an NFL team (jobs, food and merchandise production, the gas station, restaurant, and hotel dollars you wrote off, a tiny bit of public transit used, the thousands of people that watch the game at the bars around town, fees collected from speeding tickets written on people who are driving somewhere for the game, fees paid to bail rowdy fans out of jail, airplane fair, etc etc), I don't see how you are not benefiting. Not to mention the several dozen wealthy individuals (Jag players) that are forced to live and spend here at local businesses. And every-other week you're bringing in at least couple hundred people to stay in hotels and eat at restaurants (the other team, media, the chick singing the national anthem and her entourage, etc etc and some of them blow a lot of money).

Granted, the city pays X dollars to rebuild the Gator Bowl or writes off X dollars in rent and the Weavers are not writing a check for X dollars back to the city. But does anyone really expect government investment to be that straightforward? You really have to examine every collateral aspect of the industry to give it a fair accounting of ROI. But I certainly think they could be doing better, especially with downtown retention of game attendees. Some of these examples are obviously ridiculous, but the benefits are truly far reaching.

Then there's all the stuff that impossible to quantify. The team certainly makes Jacksonville more of a national city. They're a big part of the reason that people think "Florida," and not one of the 49 other states with a Jacksonville, when they hear "Jacksonville."

What was this thread about?

Last I checked, grammar Nazism wasn't any more popular than real Nazism. Do you want a Sieg Heil! or something?

And as to the rest of your post, what would you call building a stadium for a private business with taxpayer funds, maintaining it with taxpayer funds, and then giving the private business the revenue generated by the stadium built by taxpayer funds, then? The business generated by the team is largely self-contained within the stadium built and maintained by taxpayers, where the private business gets to keep the revenue. There have been numerous studies showing that taxpayer-supported professional sports teams are generally a net negative for the municipality, your horse was dead before it ever left the starting gate on this one.

Like I said back in my first post, if you want to discuss this, let's at least drop the delusion that it pays for itself and discuss the real reasons, which are nothing more than ego and entertainment. If that is deemed worth it, then fine, we live in a democracy don't we? But drop this nonsense about it being some boon for the local economy. It's not.

[JeffreyS]

Chris I am not saying you are wrong but you seem to have a strong conviction that the Jags are a net negative for the area. As boldly as you are proclaiming this as a fact it may be time to show a study or a published artical that backs your assertion up.

[Dog Walker]

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. â€" If you build it, they will come … with wallets bulging, eager to exchange greenbacks for peanuts, popcorn, hot dogs and beer, and T-shirts and ball caps with team logos.

At least that’s the theory embraced â€" time and time again â€" by mayors and city council members hoping to lure professional sports teams to their cities by promising to build new arenas for the teams. But one guy who’s not buying it is sports economist Brad Humphreys, a professor of recreation, sport and tourism at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

That’s because Humphreys and colleague Dennis Coates, a professor of economics at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, haven’t uncovered a single instance in which the presence of a professional sports team has been linked to a boost in the local economy.

“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,” Humphreys and Coates wrote in a report issued last month by the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C. The institute commissioned the professors to study the economic impact of a deal proposed by Anthony Williams, the mayor of Washington, D.C.; under terms of the agreement, the Major Baseball League would move the Montreal Expos to the nation’s capital in exchange for a new, city-built ballpark.

The professors based their report on new data as well as previously published research in which they analyzed economic indicators from 37 major metropolitan areas with major-league baseball, football and basketball teams.

“The net economic impact of professional sports in Washington, D.C., and the 36 other cities that hosted professional sports teams over nearly 30 years, was a reduction in real per capita income over the entire metropolitan area,” Humphreys and Coates noted in the report.

The researchers found other patterns consistent with the presence of pro sports teams. Among them:

• a statistically significant negative impact on the retail and services sectors of the local economy, including an average net loss of 1,924 jobs;

• an increase in wages in the hotels and other lodgings sector (about $10 per worker year), but a reduction in wages in bars and restaurants (about $162 per worker per year).
Those employed in the amusements and recreation sector appeared, at first glance, to benefit significantly from the presence of a pro team, with an average annual salary increase of $490 per worker, Humphreys said. However, he added, “this sector includes the professional athletes whose annual salaries certainly raise the average salary in this sector by an enormous amount.

As it turns out, those workers most closely connected with the sports environment who were not professional athletes saw little improvement in their earnings as a result of the local professional sports environment.”

Humphreys, who plans to present data from the report at a Nov. 29 hearing in Washington, D.C., said it is fairly common for city officials â€" blinded by bright visions of dollar signs â€" to pose as cheerleaders for projects aimed at attracting pro teams.

Arena-funding measures vary from initiative to initiative, with taxpayers typically covering most of the tab â€" even though critics of such plans maintain that team owners could easily foot the bill themselves. In the Expos case, Humphreys said, the mayor of Washington, D.C., has promoted his plan by stating that the ballpark would be funded entirely by team owners, ballpark users and the district’s largest businesses, and not by residents’ tax dollars.

Humphreys called the proposal a “novel approach,” but discounted it as disingenuous. “To say taxpayers won’t pay for the construction is really a sin of omission,” he said.

“First, the team’s share of financing the stadium is a 30-year lease committing the team to an initial rent of $3.5 million each year, increasing to $5 million by the fifth year, and then increasing by 2 percent minus $10,000 per year thereafter,” Humphreys and Coates note in their report. But, in real terms, with inflation averaging a projected 3 percent over 30 years, taxpayers will in reality be handing the team what the researchers call a “de facto rent subsidy” in just five years.

“Second,” they state, “taxes will be collected on ticket sales, concessions, parking, and merchandise sold within the stadium.
It is likely that the District of Columbia residents who purchase food, beverages, and clothing while attending games would have chosen to eat and purchase clothes in the district â€" and pay taxes on those purchases â€" in the absence of the stadium and franchise. In other words, revenues generated inside the stadium may not be new revenues, even if they are dedicated specifically to paying for the new stadium.

Humphreys and Coates also take exception to the idea that corporate “ballpark fees” would shield residents from the costs involved. “Whether it is a surcharge or an increase in the corporate income tax rate, this so-called fee is a tax increase, pure and simple. Corporations do not pay taxes, people do.

Whether it is in the form of lower wages for workers, lower asset values for corporate owners, or higher prices for consumers of the goods and services those companies provide, this tax increase will touch D.C. residents in some way.”

Funding structures aside, Humphreys said government officials lobbying for stadium deals often base perceived economic benefits on flawed impact studies. In the D.C. case, the researchers report that the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development claimed the team and ballpark would create 30 jobs earning an annual total of $94 million â€" or a whopping $261,111 per job.

“The wonder is that anyone finds such figures credible,” Humphreys said. “Yet decade after decade, cities throughout the country have struggled to attract or keep professional sports teams, and the idea that a team brings with it large economic gains invariably arises. As it turns out, claims of large tangible economic benefits do not withstand scrutiny.”

That’s because such impact studies often are based on skewed data. For instance, when citing multipliers â€" the ripple effect that each dollar spent on professional supports is projected to have on the community’s wider economy â€" impact studies often overstate such contributions and fail to differentiate between net and gross spending. And, Humphreys added, such studies typically don’t consider what economists call the “substitution effect.”

“As sport- and stadium-related activities increase, other spending declines because people substitute spending on sports for other spending,” Humphreys said. “If the stadium simply displaces dollar-for-dollar spending that would have occurred otherwise, there are no net benefits generated.”

In the end, Humphreys said, while a professional sports team may not be the golden goose that city leaders in the nation’s capital and elsewhere may hope for, there are some benefits to having a home team.

“A baseball team in D.C. might produce intangible benefits,” Humphreys said. “Rooting for the team might provide satisfaction to many local baseball fans.”

However, he added, “that is hardly a reason for the city government to subsidize the team. D.C. policymakers should not be mesmerized by faulty impact studies that claim that a baseball team and a new stadium can be an engine of economic growth.”

[JeffreyS]

Good article.  I do doubt the claim that the money spent on the local team by fans is a dollar to dollar displacement from other spending. We basically already were spending annually on our stadium so I wonder if aJax specific study has been done.  I like the study you posted is a university study but you should post the link.

[ChriswUfGator]

Personal experience in watching JSO close off downtown and the surrounding neighborhoods to traffic exiting the stadium, and shuttling everyone back out of town on I-95 and I-10, would tell you this one's a no-brainer if you think about it. The out-of-town folks couldn't possibly spend any money at surrounding businesses if they wanted to, when we run them out of town immediately following the game.

And local residents attending Jags games are a net 0, they would otherwise live and spend here anyway. And I'm obviously aware that the Jags are heavily taxpayer-supported, when the stadium was built with public money and maintained by public money, partially as budget line items when necessary and by the Duval County hospitality tax receipts, and then having watched them cry about moving any time an additional opportunity to grab more money came up, like recently with the stadium naming rights. This isn't rocket science.

Google this issue and some of the studies that have been done, if a team is self-supporting and popular then it can be a net benefit to a city, but in the instances where it only exists because the taxpayers support it, not because the market supports it, the ROI to taxpayers is almost always negative. And again, this isn't to say that we should get rid of the Jags, not at all. Just that if we're going to have a legitimate discussion about it, then you have to call a spade a spade and acknowledge it's an ego/entertainment or "QOL" investment, and not something that generates a positive economic return to the taxpayers.

Statues, fountains, and parks don't pay for themselves either, and I don't think we should get rid of those. But when we're discussing them, nobody makes these silly arguments about how they are going to make the taxpayers rich either. Let's acknowledge it for what it is if you want to have a meaningful discussion about it.

[JeffreyS]

Fair enough Chris but we should quantify it as best we can to see if it is worth investing in.

[JeffreyS]

Exerpt from a TU article on the Subject.
http://jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/091408/met_332043065.shtml

"There are more important considerations for them," Mallot said. "However, being an NFL city is certainly among the evaluations, and one of the big reasons Jacksonville is such a terrific location."

He said having the Jaguars was one of the most important pieces of the puzzle for companies such as Fidelity National, Main Street America and Deutsche Bank in decisions to move to Jacksonville or open offices here.

Jerry Mallot, executive vice president of the Jacksonville Chamber of Commerce

[ChriswUfGator]

That's typical B.S. puffery from the Chamber. Fidelity in its present form was created when Alltel Financial Services was spun off from Alltel communications. They were always here to begin with. The largest bank in the Southeast, and the three largest banks in Florida were headquartered in Jacksonville for the 100 years before we had the Jaguars, so were some of the largest insurance companies, and a good sized oil company, all before the Jaguars. If the Jags are some magic magnet for corporations, how come none of that remains the case? Shouldn't business growth have gone up, not down? lol The Chamber you have to take with the whole shaker of salt.

[Dog Walker]

Google "sport stadium economics" and you will find all the URL's needed to educate yourself of the topic.

I'm really happy the Weavers are here in Jacksonville too, but let's not confuse the issue about whether or not publicly funded sports stadiums are good economic investments for a community.

Oh,   http://news.illinois.edu/news/04/1117stadiums.html

[tufsu1]

DW....the point Chris seems to be making is that the Jaguars are at best a no sum game for Jax...it is easy to see that publicly-funded stadiums don't add up, but the team as a whole is another story!