Paulson's Mini-Bailout for Football Stadium in Portland

Jules Boykoff and Dave Zirin recently wrote a not-to-miss piece called, My Own Private Bailout, about US Treasury Secretary (and second division football team owner) Henry Paulson's attempts to use public money to build a new soccer stadium in Portland.

The piece brings up some important themes found in much of Zirin's other writings, about the relationship between local economies and professional sports in their current, corporate form. Though (particularly in the US) the latter is often touted as a means of developing the former, in a microcosm of wider trickle-down economic theory, the article touches upon some recent studies that have clarified things...

Recently, sports economists Dennis Coates of the University of Maryland and Brad Humphreys of the University of Alberta carried out research that asked whether building new stadiums to entice professional sports teams spurred the local economy.

In their study – which spanned nearly 30 years and examined almost 40 attempts to lure teams – they failed to discover a single example of a sports franchise jumpstarting the local economy. In fact, they uncovered the opposite trend: "a reduction in real per capita income over the entire metropolitan area".

They wrote: "Our conclusion, and that of nearly all academic economists studying this issue, is that professional sports generally have little, if any, positive effect on a city's economy."

Anyway, there's a lot in there, so check it out. It's good.