As a young kid, I was obsessed with baseball. I had pennants from different teams, autographed balls, and what seemed like a never-ending collection of assorted ball caps lining the walls and floor of my childhood bedroom.

I used to live for when the weather would shift, opening day would rolling around so I got to hit the road with my family and head to the ballpark on a random school night.

As I got older and became a more dedicated fan, I began to ask my father about why our family supported the San Francisco Giants Fans instead of Oakland Athletics. Seeing as both Ballclubs were located around the same distance away from our home, I was genuinely curious why he chose to dress his children in orange and black instead of green and gold.

My father, who at one point was an Oakland A’s fan, responded in a rather somber and purposeful manner.

He said since the Oakland A’s and their dramatic ownership group had constantly been flirting with the concept of leaving the Bay Area for “greener pastures”, he couldn’t let his three sons witness their beloved team being brutally torn up and ripped away from their very small but dedicated fingers.

Although some believed my father’s foresight was a bit dramatic at the time, he recently was vindicated as the Oakland A’s majority owner John Fisher moved the team out of the Oakland Coliseum and into a minor league ballpark three hours north in Sacramento until their new stadium can be built on the Las Vegas Strip.

For context, Fisher decided to excavate the team out of Oakland for several reasons — the most obvious being Vegas was a theoretically larger market and that the City of Oakland wouldn’t allow a new stadium to be built with a large sum of taxpayer dollars.

This issue isn’t just unique to Oakland though, as the recurring theme of billionaire owners threatening to relocate their teams due to a lack of public funding for new stadium projects has been happening for decades.

Despite many organizations being able to strike deals with their local governments to keep teams in their respective cities, the notion of publicly funded stadiums is one of the biggest scams in all of American sports and has no place in any professional league in this day and age.

The main argument for the continuous use of public funds to refurbish or rebuild a new sports arena or stadium stems from the idea that it’s an investment for the city itself.

According to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, public funding for sports venues can generate revenue for the affected city in several scenarios, such as if:

• the funds generate new spending by people from outside the area who otherwise would not have come to town
• the funds cause area residents to spend money locally that would not have been spent there otherwise
• the funds keep turning over locally, thereby creating “new spending”

Additionally, in an article published this past May, author and professor of Political Science Tom Knecht believes publicly funded stadiums can prompt a sense of civic pride knowing your money is helping to make your team, fanbase, and larger local community better and more engaging.

In the same article however, Knecht goes on to claim that the cost of said stadiums and renovations far outweighs the benefits of requiring taxpayer dollars to support local teams citing that governments that are located in a place that contains a major sports brand can spend millions on a regular basis without seeing much of the economic return.

This concept is also echoed by SB Nation senior Staff writer James Dator, using the example of the Baltimore Orioles and Camden Yards in his 2021 article.

When referencing a 1997 study, Dator claims the Orioles, an organization that received $200 million in public funding, had only a $3 million economic impact in its first five years after their new stadium was built on the supported area. This further proves there’s little upside, especially in the early years after construction is finished, in providing the needed funds to team owners and executives.

Similarly, a lot of the money given to owners and teams is used to fund stadiums instead of important community projects and events that would help more of the local population.

According to an NPR article produced at the same time the Brooklyn Nets were constructing their taxpayer-funded arena, journalist Neil Demause found since 1990, “big four” sports team owners — which include the NBA, NFL, MLB, and the NHL — have “reaped nearly $20 billion in taxpayer subsidies” which could have been used to fund affordable housing projects and other important social structures.

Not only is this a way for team owners to not have to foot the large construction bill alone, but it also serves as a legal mechanism to steal much-needed resources from residents and tax-paying community members.

Even with the recent trend of owners beginning to fully fund their private super-stadiums, the majority of sports team presidents and executives still “require” a city to invest in these major projects despite having an abundance of funds to do so themselves.

Of the thirty-one privately owned NFL teams — the Green Bay Packers are exempt due to having a fan-owned organization — thirty are majority-owned by active billionaires, with the team sometimes being the biggest asset they possess.

This display of infectious greed further cements the idea that all the owners care about is money, and not the dedicated fans who have always supported them. It also highlights the egotistical and insecure mannerisms of some of the world’s most wealthy individuals who prey on local governments and taxpayers to fund their corporate materialism.