I Dislike Your Favorite Team

It is common sense that owners who extract huge deals from the public to build stadiums could probably afford to pay for those stadiums themselves.  The idea that sports franchises are money-losing enterprises is belied every single time a franchise is sold to a new owner--when's the last time you saw a franchise sold at a loss, or even for a not-particularly huge gain?  But Yahoo's Jeff Passan's rip of the Florida Marlins deal gives a cold-eyed assessment to what went down in Florida, and it should be required reading for any locality even pondering the possibility of handing hundreds of millions of dollars to a "cash-strapped" billionaire.  Here's a snip:


The ugliness of the Marlins’ ballpark situation is already apparent, and the building doesn’t open for another 18 months. Somehow a team that listed its operating income as a healthy $37.8 million in 2008 alone swung a deal in which it would pay only $155 million of the $634 million stadium complex. Meanwhile, Miami-Dade County agreed – without the consent of taxpayers – to take $409 million in loans loaded with balloon payments and long grace periods. By 2049, when the debt is due, the county will have paid billions.


Any owner looking to get a stadium built has to be hoping this story makes a stir and goes away quickly.  You as a fan should hope that is stays in the collective consciousness from here on out.  


Go read it.