How Much Is a Home Team Worth? | The New Yorker

Owners argue that stadiums are good investments because they create jobs and boost the local economy. Occasionally, they do. But economists overwhelmingly conclude that the projections they use are often too rosy, and that, for cities, stadiums are almost never worth the costs. The public funding may not be siphoned out of library budgets, but shortfalls have to be covered somehow. And sources of public funding can be brutally regressive, derived from taxes on items like lottery tickets, which are bought disproportionately by the poor.