The U.S. Government has been pretty active the last couple days in its relationship with Major League Baseball. Shortly after announcing that top Cuban prospect Yoan Mancada was available to be signed by any Major League team, a story flew under the radar in regards to President Barack Obama’s budget proposal on Monday. Among the numerous parts of the substantial proposal was the elimination of the tax breaks professional sports team owners normally use in pooling money for new stadiums.
The law of the land for decades has been that team owners working in less-than-ideal facilities have looked to the taxpayers for help in building new stadiums. The most recent stadium construction was, of course, Marlins Park, where Jeffrey Loria and David Samson worked together to pull the wool over the eyes of Miami taxpayers, leaving them with over $2 million in stadium debts to pay off. The Braves will be opening their new stadium in 2017, as well, a move that also came under heavy scrutiny.
This is most definitely not the first time this has happened. The construction of New Yankee Stadium, Target Field…the list goes on and on. This has been the route owners have gone for many years. However, with so much information out there for the taxpayers to look over when it comes to stadium construction, the support for new stadium construction has waned in previous years, mainly due to the recession and general apathy towards team ownership. That hasn’t stopped team owners from figuring out different ways to get stadiums built, but it seems that the days of taxpayers paying 100% for new stadiums are over.
As it says in the linked article above, there’s a small chance the law actually passes, but it’s fueling a lot of discussions regardless of where you fall on the political spectrum. That alone is going to make things more difficult going forward with taxpayers wanting more transparency when billion-dollar construction costs start coming up. While there aren’t any candidates right now for new stadium construction in baseball outside of Atlanta, this is an ongoing discussion across all professional sports. Expect the discussions to get more heated in the years to come.
