The first sports team owner to cash in on this pay-to-play tactic was the New Orleans Saints' Tom Benson, who in 2001 capitalized on rumors that he was considering moving his NFL team to convince the state of Louisiana to pay him $186.5 million over the next 10 years to keep playing at the Superdome. In 2010, the owners of the Indiana Pacers basketball team followed suit by demanding — and receiving — $30 million in "operating subsidies" over three years to remain at Conseco Fieldhouse, the arena that the city of Indianapolis had spent $183 million to build nine years earlier. (As in Glendale, Pacers owner Herb Simon, a billionaire real estate developer, paid just $1 a year rent.)
To pay off the initial Pacers arena cost — plus the $650 million that it sank into a new stadium for the Colts football team — Indianapolis' Capital Improvement Board had already cut off all of its arts and tourism grants the year before. To help fill the new gap, Mayor Greg Ballard funneled city property-tax revenues to the board, even as he asked city agencies to reduce library hours and close public pools because of budget shortfalls.
"Indianapolis might be a great place to visit, but it should be a better place to live," says Pat Andrews, a longtime Indianapolis community activist and blogger who has closely followed the Pacers deal. In addition to cuts to parks, transit and other services, she notes, the city police force has stopped recruiting new officers because of budget cuts, and murders have risen dramatically this year. "The basic services of the city are suffering at the same time the Simons and [Colts owner Jim] Irsay are making out like bandits."
Simon, meanwhile, agreed only to keep the Pacers in town through 2013 in exchange for his $30 million in cash. The city's Capital Improvement Board has since negotiated a one-year lease extension — along with yet another $10 million in payments to the Pacers — while it works out a long-term deal, one that Andrews worries will cement annual operating subsidies in place for good. (CIB officials declined to comment for this story.)This country has lost it mind on "sports". It's terrible at the high school level in my area. They'll put astroturf on the football field but won't pay teachers. Sport stories dominate the local headlines. Scholarships will always go to a sports person over a nerdy type. College tours focus on the new sports center rather than the library, the quality of the professors or the technology available. Parents fight over little league games and hover over their kids at every practice/game. If you don't have your kid in an organized program by 4th grade he doesn't have a chance at playing in the future. Its crazy,...there are more important things than whether my kids can throw a ball through a hoop more often then your's.
I guess parents today see sports as their best chance get their kids into/through college. I'm sure it works for a few but what about the kids that don't make it? They (probably most) spend their early years sacrificing to work on their sport and then they graduate into the real world where they find people won't pay them to carry a football. We're wasting a lot of time and effort with this crap.
tnb
'via Blog this'
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