Sports stadium deals hand ever more taxpayer money to billionaires

When Washington, D.C., agreed to hand over billions in land and tax breaks for a new Commanders football stadium, experts thought it would long remain an outlier in sweetheart deals for sports teams.

But just months later, attention turned to Kansas, where officials in December announced plans to fund 60% of a new stadium for the NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs. The state committed to spending up to $1.8 billion — the largest-ever professional sports subsidy.

Geoffrey Propheter, who studies stadium deals as an associate professor in the School of Public Affairs at the University of Colorado Denver, thought the Commanders deal would stand out for years to come “for how ludicrous it was.”

The D.C. Council in September finalized a plan to dedicate more than $1 billion in public funds to move the Commanders some 7 miles from a suburb in Maryland to a new facility planned for the old RFK Stadium site.




https://www.newsfromthestates.com/article/sports-stadium-deals-hand-ever-more-taxpayer-money-billionaires