The new NFL logo went into use at the 2008 draft. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
In an excellent piece for the October 2013 edition of The Atlantic, Greg Easterbrook (who, among other things, is one of the best writers today writing about sports,) calls our attention to one of the most egregious and unjustifiable forms of corporate welfare: the subsidies that state, local, and national governments give to professional sports.
The particular focus of Easterbrook’s ire is one of the biggest hands feeding him: the National Football League, and he bites hard. The NFL, he suggests, manages to keep a small number of team owners (and a modest number of players) insanely, billion-dollar-plus rich, all while taxing you and me as a form of insurance to protect the profits coming from that team.
This is corporate welfare, pure and simple, and needs to be ended.
In a way, it is slightly unfair to pick on the NFL, because the problem extends far beyond that sport. The public carries the can for major-league baseball teams, for MSL soccer stadia, and for auto racing venues (see our commentary on the latter here.) It should be against the law to appropriate public funds to support private business ventures, especially when the public is denied the benefit from the revenues thus collected.
Boy is this ever on the money. If we must have “our” teams, they should be owned by us, the way the Green Bay Packers are owned by Green Bay. It’s disgusting that super-rich team owners extort money from cities to build stadiums, then move elsewhere at the drop of a hat.