About 20 years ago, I had an epiphany about pro sports. I worked for a Miami business newspaper, and we began wondering about Dolphins’ owner Joe Robbie’s claims that his new stadium was entirely privately funded. By today’s standards, it was. But our investigation revealed there were tons of public costs.
Whatever else you can say about Robbie, and he could be a sonofabitch, he was just about the last capitalist to own a pro sports team. Since Joe Robbie Stadium was built, the team owners have converted to the creed of socialism for the very rich.
Sports stadiums nowadays are giant palaces built for the affluent and paid for largely — and some entirely — by working- and middle-class taxpayers. I covered two initiatives in Tampa. When Malcolm Glazer purchased the Buccaneers in 1995, he used the standard pout of team owners: Build me a new stadium or I’ll move. As I detailed in a series of reports, Glazer lied about what he planned to contribute. To pass a referendum worth more than $1 billion over 30 years to Glazer, the Bucs’ owner had his political lackeys combine the stadium funding with new school construction. If parents wanted decent schools, they had to give Glazer his stadium.
The Tampa Bay Lightning NHL team, meanwhile, had taxpayers pay for its coliseum based in part on assertions that the owners were a wealthy Japanese golf course company. I won awards for exposing the lie — the owners were deadbeats with virtually no assets. The sources of the money the owners did have were never explained, but former associates accused the owners in a federal lawsuit of being “gangsters.”
In reporting these stories, I got to know a number of sports consultants. One of them gave me the game plan he uses when a client wants a new stadium. Among the recommendations: Keep details secret until it’s too late for the public to act, avoid public discussion, enlist the major newspapers and TV stations with sweetheart deals (for example, the Tampa Tribune never questioned Glazer’s stadium deal because the newspaper had become a “Pewter Partner” of the team), and at all cost, don’t let the taxpayers vote on the deal.
What has happened in Gwinnett County follows that plan. Every man, woman and tyke in Gwinnett is being robbed of about $50 to make the owners of the Braves’ minor league team wealthier than they are. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is dutifully boosterish about the whole thing, hardly noting that not all residents are overjoyed at being taxed to enrich already-rich team owners, not to mention that residents will have to pay for more costs, such as road and infrastructure improvements.
At least among my neighbors and friends in Lilburn, the mood is angry at the politicians who concocted the high-handed and secret deal — especially Commissioner Bert Nasuti and County Administrator Jock Connell. The details still haven’t been made public — Connell, with the arrogance of Marie Antoinette or Leona Helmsley, contends the scheme is too complicated for the little people to understand.
But the little people will be asked to pay. And pay. And pay some more.
