Quote Originally Posted by Just the facts View Post
The NFL is like a luxury car. Despite what the car commercials say it isn't going to get you a better job, a bigger house, lead to more sex, or make your wallet fatter - it is simply going to be a luxury item with a higher cost of ownership that you can 'afford' AFTER you have already made it. People who buy luxury cars before they can afford a luxury car will find themselves in Jacksonville's position - unable to pay for the necessities because the 'wants' never stop wanting.
And it's not just the NFL. I have been reading about Bridgeview, IL. It's has one of the highest debt ratios of any Chicago suburb, and apparently they are having to borrow $27 million more to try and take care of the struggling Toyota Park stadium , where the MLS Chicago Fire play. This latest round of borrowing will put Bridgeview taxpayers at greater risk of funding an even bigger bailout of the city-owned stadium if it continues to suck money. Originally in 2006, Bridgeview borrowed $100 million to build a new stadium for the Chicago Fire, with the expectation that it would pay it off from stadium revenues. BUT, they were apparently so excited to get a team that they signed over all soccer revenues would go to the team, leaving the city with only money from concerts and the like, which haven’t been enough to pay off $100 million in debt. So now Bridgeview keeps borrowing more money to pay off the existing loans.

And this about the Philadelphia Union's new stadium:
Four years ago, former social-sciences professor John Linder questioned why promoters wanted to “bring soccer to a basketball town.” As mayor since January, he’s been trying to make the $122 million PPL Park, financed mostly with county and state funds, generate enough money to meet the city’s costs.
Linder may levy parking and amusement fees on mostly out-of-town fans. He also wants Major League Soccer’s Philadelphia Union to make a $500,000 payment in lieu of taxes that it missed in 2010. The team says it’s negotiating the fee.

New soccer stadium somehow fails to rain riches on Philly suburb | Field of Schemes
In Chester, 15 miles (24 kilometers) south of Philadelphia, public funds covered about 71 percent of the cost of the stadium for the Union, which is in ninth place in the league’s 10-team Eastern Conference. Related residential projects and a convention center haven’t been built, leaving the city of 34,000 in a program for distressed communities that it entered in 1995. Chester’s poverty rate is almost triple the state average.