ABSTRACT
Public partners pay far more to participate in the development of major league sports facilities than is commonly understood due to the routine omission of public subsidies for land and infrastructure, and the ongoing costs of operations, capital improvements, municipal services, and foregone property taxes. Based on an analysis of all 121 sports facilities in use during the 2010 season for MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLS, the result of adjusting for these omissions is to increase the average public cost by $89 million per facility to a total of $259 million, representing a 25 percent increase over the public costs reported in the media and industry reports, which average $170 million. Across all 121 facilities, these uncounted public costs exceed $10 billion. Given that popular reports set expectations of more or less equal partnerships between host cities and teams, these estimates of public cost indicate that the public/private partnerships underlying these deals are in fact highly uneven, with public partners paying an estimated 78 percent share of costs, in an average deal, compared to 22 percent paid by private partners.
