Cui bono?

In a Weekly Standard article about the abuses of team owners that bully cities into paying for stadiums, we read:

OF COURSE, someone always profits from money shuffling, and in this case it's the owners. The main economic effect of publicly-subsidized stadiums is to dramatically increase the value of the teams, to the benefit of the owners. Financial World magazine studied increases in valuation of professional sports teams between 1991 and 1997. The value of baseball teams with new stadiums increased 79 percent in those years, while the value of teams without new stadiums rose only 11 percent; ...

Here's how it works: B/R Rangers Associates purchased the Texas Rangers in 1989 for $86 million. Threatened with losing the team in the early 1990s, Texas taxpayers forked over $135 million to help build the new Ballpark at Arlington, now called Ameriquest Field. B/R Rangers Associates then sold the team in 1998 for $250 million.

Of course, being the Weekly Standard, they do not inform the readers that it was George W. Bush who was part of the ownership, who campaigned for a tax to pay for the new stadium, and who became rich as a result.


posted by Quiddity at 2/22/2006 02:40:00 PM