"By calling for and receiving public funds, owners have sacrificed their moral, if not financial, claim of ownership...."

Unfortunately, our local and state governments have provided tax payer funds for these sports palaces for the local pro sports teams, and asked for next to nothing in return from the teams that benefit from the public facility. The simple solution to this problem is to stop building these facilities without the government entity funding the facility getting a share of the equity in the team. It's simply outrageous that a so called "private" business gets a huge boost in its equity on the basis of a new facility it didn't pay to build.

We're also indirectly subsidizing ridiculously high player salaries. The main inflationary factor in the price of attending a pro sports event are the player salaries. No way player salaries would be as high as they are today, if team owners were forced to finance the construction and maintenance of the facilities they play in. If you want prices at the stadium to go down, then you have to want player salaries to go down. You simply can't avoid that issue.

Where I live, Seattle, we still have six years to go on paying down the debt on the King Dome. A facility that hasn't existed for a decade. We're paying for it. Not the Mariners and Seahawks. And that's the whole point of these public stadiums. To pass on the cost of building and maintaining facilities to the tax payer.

I suppose an argument could be made, Rick, that they're all making enough money off of TV, souvenirs, etc., that they could cut the fans who want to attend games a break in ticket and concession prices. ... and I don't just mean differential ticket pricing, making it "cheap" to see the Royals or Orioles, etc.
That is, they (the owners and players) would, if they really cared about the fans and the future of the game.
I am beginning to teach my little boy how to hit and throw now (he'll be 3 later this month), but I don't know that I'll be able to take him to see more than a couple of games a year. And in the MLB city I live in, there are no other options but local university teams to watch (no minor league teams remotely close to where I live, very unfortunately).
So, yeah, I think both the owners and players owe us a lot ... but the owners more.
I too am paying for a new stadium built in the very expensive downtown core (no economic uptick there, by the way), while the old stadium is still being used by the NFL and the Mexican national football team (I just can't say the "s" word). ... and even that stadium is still being funded by the public... ABSURD!!!
(and I suppose some can guess where I live now?)

To equate sports with the struggle to abolish slavery is obscene and symptomatic of the narcissism of the entire sports world - owners, fans, and players - and the idea that everything that goes on in that world is of the utmost importance.

"Sport: The utmost concentration of purpose on activities wholly useless." Christopher Lasch

Dave you state that fans are owed loyalty can I then assume you would be in favor of reinstituting the reserve clause which bound ballplayers to their respective ballclubs? If the fans are owed loyalty does that mean King Lebron would not be able to leave his loyal fans in Cleveland and carpetbag himself to Miami?(Union head Marvin Miller is turning in his grave with your loyalty oath.) The accesibility that we the fans are owed is trumped by the owners/players greed. Do you think the various unions/associations would take less pay so the beer vendors could make more money? Lots of luck with that one.

You also mention stadium construction, and of course your nirvana is publicly owned stadiums/teams. Well the Green Bay Packers are publicly owned, do they have $4 beers, and I'm asking here are their seats appreciably lower than privately owned stadiums/teams?

There is an answer for the fans of baseball, and I'm surprised you didn't mention it, and that is the minor leagues. Go you Toledo Mud Hens.

"(and I suppose some can guess where I live now?)"

Sounds like San Diego, which has about the only the team playing in an old stadium the team and the NFL wants to leave, and where the MLB team moved into a downtown stadium recently.

So I recently went to a baseball game and considered the vitality of the neighborhood around the ballpark. Following points raised about Lebron's worth to Cleveland (at least surrounding the Quicken Loans Area), can it be said that subsidizing costs of stadiums leads to bringing in revenue to certain areas (and the city)? Also, in an economy plagued by a lack of jobs, these stadiums seem to provide various levels of jobs for those in the general area (at least at US Cellular Field). So, while I understand that a team's initial investment in a stadium may not be completely returned to the city (like many projects), does the city help invest in the stadiums for job creating and spurring local economies by attracting people into that area? Some clarification against this idea would be helpful.

Because of publicly funded stadium construction, luxury box licenses, sweetheart cable deals, globalized merchandising plans, and other "revenue streams," the OPPORTUNITY for owners to cater to a local working and middle class fan base has EXPANDED dramatically.

They don't see it that way, of course...

To equate sports with the struggle to abolish slavery is obscene and symptomatic of the narcissism of the entire sports world - owners, fans, and players - and the idea that everything that goes on in that world is of the utmost importance.

I did not see the use of the Douglass quote as equating sports to the abolition of slavery , though I believe the late Curt Flood saw parallels to slavery in baseball's reserve clause. Rather it is a demonstration that the abuses of power are everywhere and the first step in countering that power is as Mr. Douglass said.

Study after study has shown that the economic impact of the stadiums does not off-set the initial investment cost. If you want to invest money in job creation and economic growth there are far better ways to go about it, this argument is a thin disguise for robbing the public trust. As one commentor said in Seattle they are still making public payments on a stadium that doesn't even exsist anymore.

Kellia,

A fair point about Curt Flood, I had forgotten that. But, keep in mind that Dave was writing about fans, not players, and we're hardly slaves to sports owners. We can just walk away - unlike a slave or Curt Flood - and our lives our hardly the worse, it seems to me. I just can't see how demanding less for beer is any way analogous to demanding the abolition of slavery, although I do agree with you about abuse of power.

Thanks for the clarification bharvey124.

I think the problem of sports owing us fans is that the problem is with owners and players. With people struggling now, millionaire and billionaires (and hundred thousandaires) fighting over all their money is ridiculous. While owners may have let certain aspects of the game get out of control, players (right or wrong) have exploited the system. Rookie contracts in the NFL are a perfect example. The owners let this paying rookies too much system get out of control (special thanks to agents too - it would be nice to see a column about agents exploiting players and the system) but if a owner wants to pay lower than everyone else that owner is ripped by the players union and the player hold out. A system cannot be corrected if both sides are not willing to fix it. Sigh...

And the way you write, you sound like the typical Internet Tough Guy (tm)--run your mouth, call names and point fingers behind the safety of a computer screen. But you're too chicken to do it in public, since you'd be held accountable for your mouth. Must be one very lonely life you're living, isn't it?

And I hope the NFL does clear out, if increased subsidization is what they "need", as they seem to claim. A money loser twice over... I just can't wait to pay for 3 taxpayer-subsidized stadia, which would be the end result, I'm very much afraid.
Meanwhile, the usual social services, education, etc are being cut back...
When does a tax payer get a real say in this?
A revolutionary proposal: Instead of 1st past the post, how about all fiscal claims that require public votes being asked to get 50% + 1 of all registered taxpayers... The burden should be on these beggars to get the vote out to pay for their little rich boy habits, no?
Or is that too much democracy? giving taxpayers greater rights over how their taxes are spent?

Just a thought.

You're not fooling anyone either Bruce. It seems like you're good at the finger pointing and name calling I mentioned earlier--and very little else it seems.

Mr. Pot, meet Mr. Kettle. Mr. Kettle, Mr. Pot.

Can you actually read? Because if you could you would know that Dave feels the average fan is owed more from there pro sports teams because these pro sports teams take large sums of public money to build state of the art facilities in order to operate and make large profits, and then the tax paying fan sees no benefits as a result despite the fact that their tax dallars have been invested with set pro sports team.
I do look forward to you playing the race card and crying about how you are a victim of reverse racism, it will be very interesting to see how you spin this article to accomplish that but I have faith that you can do it and that you can entertain me in the process.

The Packers are no more publicly owned than Citibank. They're run by a corporation called Green Bay Packers Inc. The whole idea that the town owns the Packers is a warm fuzzy myth. Green Bay Packers Inc. also cried to the poor house and got all sorts of concessions in order to refurbish their stadium as well.

Colin-cleansing? Wow Brucie--how original!

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury--the prosecution rests. Bruce is guilty as charged of being an run-of-the-mill Internet Tough Guy (TM).

... and we should ignore them and their asinine race-baiting, too.
"Trog" is a short form of troglodyte, and the name of an atrocious film made in 1970 (see: http://www.legendaryjoancrawford.com/trog.html ... yes, starring Joan Crawford).
Cave dwellers, then... instead of trolls, living under bridges (too uplifting, so to speak).
All of which puts be in mind of films such as "Willard" (1971) and its sequel "Ben" (1972, complete with Michael Jackson's "love song" to said rat), about truly revolting once-pet rats (they lead rat revolts out of the sewers, of course).
So, "Bruce", may we now adopt you as our pet, revolting rat? Ben, Willard, Bruce... why not? And throw in the other Trogs as well, I suggest.
(Though I do wander of topic a bit... rats or trogs?)

A Teflon trog then?

Here's something really ironic--or maybe prophetic--about the movie "Willard."

The guy who played the title role in the 1971 original, was named. . .

Bruce Davidson! He played the psychotic Willard, who let the rats do his dirty work until the rats turned on him. Ben was the leader of the pack.

And as far as you're concerned Bruce--I've had a very lovely time. This wasn't it.

The British Columbia Provincial Government is paying $458 M to replace the roof on BC Place. BC Place was built by the Provincial Government in 1983 for $85 Million and it seats about 60,000. In the last year this government has cut grants to all amateur sports (Provincial Sport Organizations and the Community Sports Organizations). It has completely eliminated its grant to BC SCHOOL SPORTS. The umbrella organization for high school sports. It has implimented a new HST tax that forces additional costs on amateur sports for the rental of facilities (ice time, field time) and this tax is also imposed on the purchase of all athletic equipment, supplies and uniforms. So the two professional teams that will benefit from the new BC Place roof are the BC Lions Football Team and the Vancouver Whitecaps Soccer Team. It will not be an asset for amateur sport.

The greatest news for sports in the Vancouver area was when the Vancouver Grizzlies Basketball Team went to Memphis for that left many millions of dollars from the corporate community in Vancouver instead of the pockets of the owner, Michael Heisley, and over paid NBA players who did not want to be in Vancouver in the first place.

Governmenst should have to go to referendum with the electorate before they are allowed to spend millions of dollars on facilities for professional teams.

...that the NFL needs at least two teams in the huge broadcasts markets of Southern California. So the only move I could see the Chargers making would be backto Los Angeles in a renovated Coliseum.

But I'm going to assume the same financing of a renovation of Coliseum arises in L.A. I mean there isn't enough tax payer money being raised to pay for basic services, but we're still supposed to keep building palaces for rich sports teams and their overpaid athletes.

There's nothing wrong with revering athleticism in top young athletes. But come of folks, is somebody who plays a season sport really worth $10 million a year? I don't think anybody can justify paying a professional athlete that much when what they do simply isn't nearly as important as what, say, fire fighters and teachers do.

I don't care what your political or social views are. If you can't care enough to write properly, and in a coherent fashion than I can't take you seriously.

No matter what you may think Bruce, there IS something wrong with your writing--it rambles on and on. Improper usage of your/you're (your a clown), no separation between your sentences, and you twist facts and context around to make the other person look like the bad guy. And that's along with the second grade name calling. Very immature on your part.

If I were a English teacher, I'd be turning everything back to you and make you rewrite it--PROPERLY. Can't wait to see what you've got to say next--I know it'll be nonsensical.

... and we're "liberals" too?
This Teflon trog seems to be more than lost, if you ask me.

Hey, Bob!
I was born and raised in Vancouver, took a nephew to a couple of "Grizzly" games (almost lost my hearing and my sanity)...
I'm with you.

Rick: I should think the solution to the $10-20 million athlete must start with the over-hyping of high school and college (slave-labor) sports here in the US. They even try to do the same with hockey... not that the Canadian Major Junior situation is much better.

Can't see it happening though, unfortunately.

. . .you just proved my point. Thank you very much--have a nice day.