Supporting the Home Team
Sports are big business, and especially pro sports. Fans are passionate about their favorite teams. But there may be a limit.
The Chicago Bears are enjoying a playoff run for the first time in five years, winning in the first round. For a long time, they’ve been looking for a site to replace venerable Soldier Field. In this case, “venerable” is a polite way of saying “old”—at least as far as the team is concerned. These days, teams make money with fancy skyboxes and other amenities.
That led the team to explore a suburb, Arlington Heights. Plans were for a fixed-roof venue and surrounding entertainment district. The team even bought land there in 2023. But their desire for public funding and tax breaks led to a stalemate with Illinois officials.
So the team is now exploring Northwest Indiana, right down to the NFL commissioner visiting possible stadium sites there with team officials.
Meanwhile, the Kansas City Chiefs won three Super Bowls in five years and asked voters there to support renovations to Arrowhead Stadium through a sales tax. Voters soundly rejected the move. Now the team is making noise about moving across the river to Kansas, which is ready to welcome them with open arms, with state support. Officials in their current home county are scrambling to save the home team.
Supporters say underdeveloped areas would love to have the influx of attention and development from a new citizen. Stadiums that cost more than a billion dollars to build ultimately have a nice property tax assessment. And there’s always private development around a stadium.
You’d think, if that was all true, that the locals would gladly support a new stadium in the home area. But voters are drawing a line in providing too many public resources for rich team owners, especially when the teams only use the facility a handful of times a year. Not much different than here in Iowa, where recently an unusually high number of school bond issues have failed. In short—taxpaying voters have had enough of other people reaching into their pockets.
To the new places, it’s the shiny new object full of promise. But those local officials better take the temperature of voters before buying season tickets or official team jerseys.
