Via Heritage Foundation: (excerpt)
Here’s How Much Money the NFL Rakes in From Taxpayers
Michael Sargent, an infrastructure expert at The Heritage Foundation, wrote about how sports teams use specially crafted tax breaks to get the public to finance their massive projects.
“Tax-exempt municipal bonds are typically reserved for public-use projects such as bridges, water systems, and other infrastructure,” Sargent wrote for The Daily Signal. “Yet because of a loophole in the tax code, private-use stadiums can take advantage of this tax break, and have done so prolifically.”
In fact, only a handful of NFL and other major league teams use privately-financed venues to host their games.
It would seem after sinking enormous investments into sports franchises, cities would reap serious financial benefits in return.
But this isn’t the case at all.
Research from George Mason University has shown that not only do communities gain almost no economic benefits from subsidized sports teams, but some findings “indicate harmful effects of sports on per capita income, wage and salary disbursements, and wages per job.”
The following, appearing in The Federalist , makes a good point about ending subsidies and legal privileges for NFL and its largely private “infrastructure” but the thought that Trump’s comments about the player’ taking a knee are misplaced is wrong. The author’s article would be out of the blue but for Trump’s comments and controversy. Trump’s comments were “useful” period.
Trump Should Target The NFL’s Special Legal Privileges, Not Players’ Politics
We likely wouldn’t be having this conversation if the NFL had to operate under the same rules as any other billion-dollar corporation.
R Mall
