Sports Topic Wave 1 Patriot Brief 2014

George Mason Debate

2014-2015[File Name]

Sports Topic---Wave 1---Patriot Brief 2014

Sports Topic---Patriot Brief 2014 1

*** Definitions 2

On Balance 3

Professional Sports Organization (PSO) 4

Public Subsidies 5

*** Con 6

Subsidies BAD --- Economy 7

Subsidies BAD --- Economy --- Framing 14

Subsidies BAD --- Economy --- A2: Teams Will Relocate 15

Subsidies BAD --- Budget --- Expensive 16

Subsidies BAD --- Budget --- Trade-Off 20

Subsidies BAD --- Sports Diplomacy 21

Subsidies BAD --- Urban Sprawl BAD 22

Subsidies BAD --- Urban Sprawl BAD 23

*** Pro 25

Subsidies GOOD --- Economy 26

Subsidies GOOD --- Public Engagement 30

Subsidies GOOD --- Sports Diplomacy 31

Subsidies GOOD --- Urban Sprawl GOOD 32

Resolved: On balance, public subsidies for professional athletic organizations in the United States benefit their local communities.

*** Definitions

On Balance

Definition of “on balance”

Cambridge Dictionary

(http://books.google.com/books?id=pqlRO2jdI2gC&pg=PA66&lpg=PA66&dq=%22after+considering+the+power+or+influence+of+both+sides+of+a+question%22&source=bl&ots=zGRKCl0XaU&sig=a19rdN82dbLQOuLgPA5fJDlfQFQ&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ngq7U5n5CNWuyATRz4CIBw&ved=0CB8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22after%20considering%20the%20power%20or%20influence%20of%20both%20sides%20of%20a%20question%22&f=false)

“On balance” : after considering the power or influence of both sides of a question (Cambridge)

Professional Sports Organization (PSO)

The government definition of a professional sports organization

US Code 3701

(USCS 3701 Article 3 Title 28 Judiciary and Judicial Procedure: Part 6. Particular Proceedings: Chapter 178. Professional and Amateur Sports Protection)

a professional sports organization is

(A) a person or governmental entity that sponsors, organizes, schedules, or conducts a competitive game in which one or more professional athletes participate, or

(B) a league or association of persons or governmental entities described in subparagraph (A). above

Sports organizations are directly involved in the sports industry --- have explicit boundaries to separate members and non-members

Slack, Parent, associate professor in sports management, 2005

(Trevor, Milena, “Understanding Sports Organizations- 2nd Edition: The Application of Organization Theory”, Google Books, JMM)

- people/groups of people interact together who are directly involved in one or more aspects of the sport industry, such as the production of sport-related goods. Sports organizations have a goal directed purpose, and its members are structured in a certain way so as to complete activities and achieve that goal. Organizations also have an identifiable boundary between members and nonmembers, usually a contract with members in which they receive money for their involvement.

Public Subsidies

Public subsidy is a provision of economic value given to a private entity for public benefits --- the provider can’t receive goods or services in return

Brownstein, has a Masters in Political Science from Stanford, 2007

(Bob, “Public Subsidies Definition”, 7-06-14, http://www3.sanjoseca.gov/clerk/TaskForce/SRTF/pdf/051707/Revised%20Pu-blic%20Subsidy%20Defintion_Brownstein_5_9_07.pdf, NV)

“A public subsidy is a provision of economic value by the City or the RDA to a private entity for purposes beneficial to the public, such as the operation of a business or event within San Jose, but for which the City or RDA do not directly or indirectly receive goods or services in return for that expenditure

Public subsidies are given for the purpose of poverty reduction

Wodon and Angel-Urdinola, an adviser in the World Bank's education department and senior economist in the Human Development Department, 2006

(Quentin and Diego F, “Do Utility Subsidies Reach the Poor?”, 7-06-14, http://siteresources.worldba-nk.org/INTISPMA/Resources/Training-Events-and-Materials/UtilitySubsidies.pdf, NV)

Given the budget constraints faced by many governments a good targeting performance of public subsidies (whether in cash or in kind) is important for the reduction of poverty.

Public subsidies are cash payments or tax benefits to remove a burden

Jalota, Claremont McKenna College, 13

Annie Jalota, “India: Subsidy State or Developmental State?” 7-7-14, http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1615&context=cmc_theses, AM)

Public subsidies- A benefit given by the government to groups or individuals usually in the form of a cash payment or tax reduction in an effort to reduce poverty. The subsidy is usually given to remove some type of burden and is often considered to be in the interest of the public.

*** Con

Subsidies BAD --- Economy

Subsidies don’t generate any positive economic outcome --- they increase government debt

Garofalo, Economic Policy Editor for ThinkProgress.org, 12

(Pat, “If You Build It, They Might Not Come: The Risky Economics of Sports Stadiums,” 7-7-14, http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/09/if-you-build-it-they-might-not-come-the-risky-economics-of-sports-stadiums/260900/ Y2K)

This is an altogether too common problem in professional sports. Across the country, franchises are able to extract taxpayer funding to build and maintain private facilities, promising huge returns for the public in the form of economic development.

For instance, just three of the NFL's 31 stadiums were originally built without public funds. In two of those cases, public funding was later used to upgrade the stadium or surrounding facilities, even as all 32 of the NFL's teams ranked among Forbes' 50 most valuable sporting franchises in the world in 2012. (Only MetLife Stadium, shared by the New York Jets and New York Giants, received no public funding.)

Time after time, politicians wary of letting a local franchise relocate -- as the NBA's Seattle Supersonics did, to Oklahoma City before the 2008-2009 season -- approve public funds, selling the stadiums as public works projects that will boost the local economy and provide a windfall of growth.

However, according to leading sports economists, stadiums and arenas rarely bring about the promised prosperity, and instead leave cities and states mired in debt that they can't pay back before the franchise comes calling for more.

"The basic idea is that sports stadiums typically aren't a good tool for economic development," said Victor Matheson, an economist at Holy Cross who has studied the economic impact of stadium construction for decades. When cities cite studies (often produced by parties with an interest in building the stadium) touting the impact of such projects, there is a simple rule for determining the actual return on investment, Matheson said: "Take whatever number the sports promoter says, take it and move the decimal one place to the left. Divide it by ten, and that's a pretty good estimate of the actual economic impact."

Others agree. While "it is inarguable that within a few blocks you'll have an effect," the results are questionable for metro areas as a whole, Stefan Szymanski, a sports economist at the University of Michigan, said.

PUBLIC MONEY BALL

There are numerous reasons for the muted economic effects. The biggest is that arenas often sit empty for a significant portion of the year. Jobing.com Arena is guaranteed 41 hockey games annually. The other 324 nights, it must find concerts, conventions or other events to fill the schedule, and in Glendale, where the arena competes with facilities in nearby Phoenix, that can be tough to do.

"We've looked at tons of these things, and the one that we found that seemed to make sense is the Staples Center in Los Angeles," Matheson said. "But they use it 250 dates a year. They don't make sense when you're using it 41 times a year and competing with another venue down the street."

Another reason the projects rarely make sense is because of the way they are structured. Stadiums and arenas are financed with long-term bonds, meaning cities and states will be stuck with the debt for long periods of time (often 30 years). And while cities make 30-year commitments to finance stadiums, their commitments to government workers and other local investments are often made on a year-to-year basis, meaning that, just as in Glendale, it becomes easier to eliminate public sector jobs and programs than to default on debt incurred from arenas.

The counterargument -- made by council member Joyce Clark, who voted for the subsidies, and Glendale First, an organization in favor of the package -- is that the Coyotes and their arena provide support to the local economy that otherwise wouldn't be there.

"It's a huge economic engine for Glendale," Bea Wyatt, a spokesperson for Glendale First said. According to Wyatt, who doesn't live in Glendale but frequents the city for Coyotes games, sales tax revenue made up 41 percent of Glendale's budget last year, and a significant portion was derived from sales around the arena. Supporters also claim the deal with Jamison is a good one for the city, since he will eventually pay for the arena's management and employ local workers.

But again, economists don't seem to buy the argument. While Glendale First claims that more than 600,000 visitors -- three times Glendale's population -- came to the city for hockey last year, the Coyotes finished last in the NHL in attendance. And it is unclear how many of those visitors were, like Wyatt, residents of nearby communities who may patronize restaurants but don't spend money shopping or staying in hotels.

Matheson estimates that 20 percent of fans for a Major League Baseball game come from outside the local area, and that the figure for hockey games is likely much smaller. That's hardly enough to fill the local hotels or to add outside spending to the local economy in other ways, he said.

"It's not generating new revenue. This is local spending on a local event," Matheson said, adding that most of the money spent in and around arenas and stadiums would likely be spent elsewhere in the local economy if there were no sporting events to attend.

Though it is clear that new facilities are not a wise investment for taxpayers, the argument from Glendale First stems from the fact that Jobing.com Arena is already there. Refusing to use more public financing - and potentially allowing the Coyotes to leave for a new town - Wyatt said, would amount to the city turning its back on its initial investment and risking the failure of hotels, restaurants, and other businesses.

Empirical studies validate

Easterbrook, a contributing editor at The Atlantic, 13

(Gregg, “How the NFL Fleeces Taxpayers: Taxpayers fund the stadiums, antitrust law doesn't apply to broadcast deals, the league enjoys nonprofit status, and Commissioner Roger Goodell makes $30 million a year. It's time to stop the public giveaways to America's richest sports league—and to the feudal lords who own its teams,” 9-18-13, http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/10/how-the-nfl-fleeces-taxpayers/309448/ Y2K)

It's a story that could have been told in almost any American city over the past two decades. Owners of teams in the "big four" sports leagues — the NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL — have reaped nearly $20 billion in taxpayer subsidies for new homes since 1990. And for just as long, fans, urban planners and economists have argued that building facilities for private sports teams is a massive waste of public money. As University of Chicago economist Allen Sanderson memorably put it, "If you want to inject money into the local economy, it would be better to drop it from a helicopter than invest it in a new ballpark."

Studies demonstrating pro sports stadiums' slight economic impact go back to 1984, the year Lake Forest College economist Robert Baade examined thirty cities that had recently constructed new facilities. His finding: in twenty-seven of them, there had been no measurable economic impact; in the other three, economic activity appeared to have decreased. Dozens of economists have replicated Baade's findings, and revealed similar results for what the sports industry calls "mega-events": Olympics, Super Bowls, NCAA tournaments and the like. (In one study of six Super Bowls, University of South Florida economist Phil Porter found "no measurable impact on spending," which he attributed to the "crowding out" effect of nonfootball tourists steering clear of town during game week.) Meanwhile, numerous cities are littered with "downtown catalysts" that have failed to catalyze, from the St. Louis "Ballpark Village," which was left a muddy vacant lot for years after the neighboring ballpark opened, to the Newark hockey arena sited in the midst of a wasteland of half-shuttered stores.

"Public subsidies for stadiums are a great deal for team owners, league executives, developers, bond attorneys, construction firms, politicians and everyone in the stadium food chain, but a really terrible deal for everyone else," concludes Frank Rashid, a lifelong Detroit Tigers fan and college English professor. Rashid co-founded the Tiger Stadium Fan Club in 1987, and for the next twelve years he fought an unsuccessful battle against Michigan's plans to spend $145 million in public funds to replace that historic ballpark. "The case is so clear against this being a top priority for cities to be doing with their resources, I would have thought that wisdom would have prevailed by now."

You should prefer con’s statistics --- their studies are filled with ideological biases

Easterbrook, a contributing editor at The Atlantic, 13

For politicians eager to embrace sports deals, it's easy to find consulting firms willing to produce glowing "economic impact studies" — even though sports economists nearly unanimously dismiss them as hogwash. For example: Economic Research Associates told the city of Arlington, Texas, that spending $325 million on a new stadium for billionaire oil baron Jerry Jones's Dallas Cowboys would generate $238 million a year in economic activity. Critics immediately pointed out that this merely totaled up all spending that would take place in and around the stadium. Hidden deep in the report was the more meaningful estimate that Arlington would see just $1.8 million a year in new tax revenues while spending $20 million a year on stadium subsidies.

Every credible sources conclude --- sports subsidies don’t produce substantial economic benefits

Shultz, a professor @ Hamline University School of Business, 11

(David, the editor of the Journal of Public Affairs Education (JPAE), “Dumb and dumber: The folly of taxpayer handouts for professional sports,” 2-10-11, http://www.minnpost.com/community-voices/2011/02/dumb-and-dumber-folly-taxpayer-handouts-professional-sports, Y2K)

Three basic arguments are used

In general, as one surveys local debates about stadium construction in the United States, three basic arguments are employed to support using public money to build sports stadiums. First, proponents claim that building a new stadium will have a big impact on the economy, generating many new jobs and bringing new businesses to the area. However study after study has demonstrated that advocates of public spending on stadiums consistently exaggerate the benefits of sports to a local economy.