{"id":187086,"date":"2010-01-15T20:00:48","date_gmt":"2010-01-16T01:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.wsj.com\/economics\/2010\/01\/15\/qa-jerry-bell-of-minnesota-twins-on-economics-of-sports-stadiums\/"},"modified":"2010-01-15T20:00:48","modified_gmt":"2010-01-16T01:00:48","slug":"qa-jerry-bell-of-minnesota-twins-on-economics-of-sports-stadiums","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/187086","title":{"rendered":"Q&A: Jerry Bell of Minnesota Twins on Economics of Sports Stadiums"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today’s Journal story on the price of sports fandom looks at two economists who have studied the intangible value of having a pro sports team. Not the dollars and cents economic benefits like new taxes or increased real estate values but, rather, the price of all the warm and fuzzy feelings one gets from being a sports fan or just having a team in town. <\/em><\/p>\n

So Real Time Economics took a moment to talk about the economics of sports stadiums with Jerry Bell, president of Twins Sports Inc., the company that owns the Minnesota Twins — Minnesota\u0092s baseball team. This season the Twins move into Target Field, which taxpayers helped pay for. Some excerpts:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
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Twins Sports President Jerry Bell (Associated Press)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Economists are starting to study the \u0093welfare value\u0094 of sports teams — basically the dollar value of the emotional benefits fans get from their local sports team. What do you think of this idea? <\/strong>
\nBell: <\/strong>That\u0092s like saying what would you pay for a memory. Most people attend their first professional baseball game with another family member. If you go to your first game with your father or grandfather, what you paid for you ticket you won\u0092t remember, where you sit you might remember but you will never forget who you went with.
\nI remember very well the first baseball game I went to. The first date I had with my now wife was at a baseball game. Those are the kinds of things that gathering places like a baseball games or an orchestra do to make you a whole as a community.<\/p>\n

Do you think that publicly funded ballparks make sense on the economic argument alone, meaning that they create new taxes and jobs? <\/strong>
\nBell:<\/strong> It depends on your alternative for investment. My view is that is does have an economic impact in a targeted sense. It benefits this neighborhood. Does that make a ripple effect in the state economy? Probably not.<\/p>\n

As someone who has sold a stadium to your community which do you think resonates more, the economic argument or civic pride? <\/strong>
\nBell:<\/strong> Oh, clearly the social aspect. Ten years from now, maybe less, no one will know what this ballpark cost and they won\u0092t care. They\u0092ll either like it and they\u0092ll enjoy coming here or they won\u0092t, and they\u0092ll judge it on that. We want it to be that place that you can escape to on a sunny day.<\/p>\n

What is your response to people who say the public shouldn’t be subsidizing private businesses? <\/strong>
\nBell:<\/strong> That\u0092s virtually everywhere. Take farms. Everybody believes that a farm subsidy helps the family farmer. The family farmer is now a corporate farmer and the subsidies are going to corporations. We got into this, and I don\u0092t know how we did, but we did, and now it\u0092s in sports as well.
\n
\nHow much public money did the Twins get? <\/strong>
\nBell:<\/strong> We paid $200 million and [the public] paid $350 million. The days of getting the public to pay for the whole ballpark are over.<\/p>\n

Given the recession and now its disastrous effect on public finances, do you expect to see cities and states take a harder line on paying for stadiums? <\/strong>
\nBell:<\/strong> The private side will have to increase some. I don\u0092t know what the right amount is and it depends. There is always a big difference when you want to attract a team — a team is probably going to pay nothing [to move from one city to another]. On the other hand, if you\u0092re a team that has been in a community for a long time you are expected to be different.<\/p>\n

Do you expect your stadium will return the tax money put into it with taxes and\/or economic benefits? <\/strong>
\nBell: <\/strong>I think it has a chance. It depends on the economy. Does the real estate value around the ballpark go up and if it goes up, does it contribute to construction and further development and what kind of real estate taxes does that produce? If all of those things come together over a long period of time, maybe. It\u0092s hard to say.<\/p>\n

If you sign catcher Joe Mauer to the huge extension people think he’ll get that would surely help the state’s tax base. <\/strong>
\nBell:<\/strong> He does pay Minnesota income taxes.<\/p>\n

<\/img><\/a>
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\n<\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today’s Journal story on the price of sports fandom looks at two economists who have studied the intangible value of having a pro sports team. Not the dollars and cents economic benefits like new taxes or increased real estate values but, rather, the price of all the warm and fuzzy feelings one gets from being […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":850,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-187086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/850"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187086"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187086\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}