- Target:
- Residents of Nashville, Tennessee
- Region:
- United States of America
The Tennessee Titans, Nashville Predators, and Nashville Sounds all currently receive millions of dollars of tax generated funding to operate each year. Each of the sports facilities (LP Field, The Sommet Center, and Greer Stadium) used by these teams operate at a loss each year. These sports facilities mirror a national trend of sporting facilities to operate at a loss. While some are calling for taxpayer funding to build a new stadium, it is time to realize the insanity of funding sports facilities with tax dollars.
The Heartland Institute estimates professional sports facilities cost taxpayers some $500 million a year. A typical sports facility costs local taxpayers more than $10 million a year. According to The Brookings Institution, a new sports facility has an extremely small (perhaps even negative) effect on overall economic activity and employment. No recent facility appears to have earned anything approaching a reasonable return on investment. No recent facility has been self-financing in terms of its impact on net tax revenues.
In the long run, taxes imposed on businesses in or near the stadium will actually decrease business in those areas and thus decrease revenues both in the immediate area near the sports facility and throughout the rest of the community.
It is our goal to help persuade Mayor Karl Dean and the local Nashville Government to abandon funding facilities like a new Nashville Sounds Stadium with tax money. We understand the reality that no mater how wonderful a team is, it simply will never make economic sense to subsidies the team or a new stadium for the team with taxpayer funds.
We, the undersigned, call on Mayor Karl Dean to petition the local Nashville Government to abandon the idea of funding a new sports facility, like a stadium for the Nashville Sounds with tax dollars.
Specifically, sports stadiums should be funded by their fans. We urge Mayor Karl Dean to unite fans and taxpayers to become the owners of professional sports facilities and teams, their interests will take a back seat to those of companies and individuals who profit each time a team relocates. Fans and taxpayers--the people who benefit and the people who pay--need to work together to protect their shared interests.
A key to the success of a campaign for fan ownership of professional sports teams and facilities will involve taxpayers, fan clubs, the media, and local elected officials.
We call on Mayor Karl Dean to lead the way by discouraging tax funding for professional sports facilities in Nashville. The opportunity to sell stock--even "souvenir stock" in a sports facility would give subsidy opponents the financial stake required to keep them organized year after year.
We ask Mayor Karl dean to lead Nashville in rejecting tax funding for sports facilities, such as a new stadium for the Nashville Sounds, and instead encourage private funding and ownership.
You can further help this campaign by sponsoring it
The Stop Taxpayer Funding for a New Nashville Baseball Stadium petition to Residents of Nashville, Tennessee was written by Daniel Lewis and is in the category City & Town Planning at GoPetition.