Sports Owners+ Taxpayer dollars = New Stadiums?

Let me start off by saying that i’m a bonafide sports junkie.  I wake up and fall asleep to ESPN’s Sportscenter and listen to podcasts on the way to school.  In fact, I have espn.com on my browser tabs while I write this!  That being said, I cannot tell you how frustrated I get every time I hear that a multi-million dollar sports franchise wants to use taxpayer dollars to build a new stadium.  In this article by thinkprogress.org, Travis Waldron gives us five cities that want to use tax payer dollars to help fund brand new stadiums for their teams.  Their argument for doing so is that by the citizens helping fund the stadium, new jobs will be created, thus the economy will flourish.  Call me crazy but, I do not think that the owners have the best interests of the people in mind.  Take for example this article by Scott Keyes, in which the city of Cincinnati had to sell of local hospitals in order to help fund the building of stadiums for the Cincinnati Reds and the Bangles.  Or the city of Atlanta, home of the Falcons, who want to have restorations done to their stadium while there were cuts being made to the education budget.  These kinds of investments are almost all the time more risk than reward.  The stadiums are never done on time and always cost more than originally quoted.  The idea of a beautiful new attraction to your beloved city is always enticing, and there is a great feeling in knowing that your hard earned money helped pay for a brand new stadium.  But what’s the point in trying to help when once all is set in done, you won’t be able to afford a ticket to the stadium you have financially helped build? Or worse, you could end up like the Miami Marlins.