In the battle between cities and professional sports teams, there are two options for the politicians: give in to the ever-increasing demands or push back.
And because most cities that have already fought these battles are populated with increasingly cynical and resentful taxpayers, there’s really only one choice – try to force concessions from team owners and leagues.
That’s what Seattle did. And with the NBA’s SuperSonics packing their Nikes for Oklahoma City, many armchair point guards are blaming the politicians.
But that misses the big picture. (As if something as trivial as professional sports can ever appear in the big picture.) Because if governments and taxpayers are ever going to regain an equal footing with pro sports, they have to say no once in a while. And if they say no, they have to be prepared for the leagues to not just threaten to leave town, but actually leave town.
They have to be prepared for all of this because the alternative is to exist in a constant state of stadium blackmail. Where arenas once lasted 20 or 30 years, they now last 10, not because they fall apart but because owners and players’ unions demand more for ever-increasing salaries.
If they can increase incomes and profits by demanding the replacement of “obsolete” arenas, why wouldn’t they? The only thing stopping them is if more governments say no – if they insist that teams and leagues increase private contributions.
Heck, it might even end the blackmail altogether. OK, probably not.
Yet the coverage of the Sonics departure – including the fan blogs and the talk-radio comments – suggests that the politicians screwed up.
Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels seems to be getting the bulk of the grief, along with Starbucks boss Howard Schultz, who is shocked at the move after selling the team to an Oklahoma City guy who had a stated goal of winning an NBA team for that city.
But set aside, just this once, our hard-won American right to hate our politicians. If there is any blame for the loss of the team, it must lie with sports economics that are based upon squeezing tax money out of host cities.
Blame the owners for creating it more than the politicians for responding to it. Nickels didn’t agree to give the Sonics everything the owners wanted because the vast majority of Seattle voters didn’t want that. The Legislature didn’t agree to Clay Bennett’s $278 million demand because the voters in lawmakers’ districts didn’t want that. Gov. Chris Gregoire didn’t agree because … well, you get the point.
One sportswriter in Seattle called the Legislature dysfunctional. Yet in this case, the Legislature functioned as it should – the members weighed a request for public money based on whether the residents of the state thought it was a good way to spend their taxes. When the answer was no, the politicians said no.
Since only a minority of residents think taxpayers should keep transferring hundreds of millions of dollars to owners and players, there’s going to be a lot less political fallout than the media coverage suggests.
There remains a chance that Seattle and the state can secure a team for a lot less money than Bennett and the NBA were demanding. The “dysfunctional” members of the Legislature will have an easier time taking a vote on a tax package contingent on getting a team sometime in the future than when they had unpopular owners breathing down their necks.
If that works out, it will be as close to a victory as cities can get when doing battle with tax-subsidized monopolies masquerading as free enterprise. It will become a precedent cited by other cities when they are faced with similar money demands.
Eventually the leagues will run out of Oklahoma Cities and will have to break even by cutting costs, not continually increasing the amount of tax dollars they demand.
OK, probably not.
Peter Callaghan: 253-597-8657
peter.callaghan@thenewstribune.com
blogs.thenewstribune.com/politics
