Can a sports franchise "blackmail" a city into getting what it
wants--a new stadium, say, or favorable leasing terms--by
threatening to relocate? In 1982, the owners of the Chicago White
Sox pledged to keep the team in Chicago if the city approved a
$5-million tax-exempt bond to finance construction of luxury suites
at Comiskey Park. The city council approved it. A few years later,
when Comiskey Park was in need of renovation, the owners threatened
to move the team to Florida unless a new stadium was built. A site
was chosen near the old stadium, property condemned, residents
evicted, and a new stadium built. "We had to make threats," the
owners said. "If we didn't have the threat of moving, we wouldn't
have gotten the deal."
"Sports is not a dominant industry in any city," writes Charles
Euchner, "yet it receives the kind of attention one might expect to
be lavished on major producers and employers." In "Playing the
Field," Euchner looks at why sports attracts this kind of attention
and what that says about the urban political process. Examining the
relationships between Los Angeles and the Raiders, Baltimore and
the Colts and the Orioles, and Chicago and the White Sox, Euchner
argues that, in the absence of public standards for equitable
arbitration between cities and teams, the sports industry has the
ability to steer negotiations in a way that leaves cities
vulnerable.
According to Euchner, this greater leverage of sports franchises
is due, at least in part, to their overall economic insignificance.
Since the demands of a franchise do not directly affect many
interest groups, opponents of stadium projects have difficulty
developing coalitions to oppose them. The result is that civic
leaders tend to succumb to the blackmail tactics of professional
sports, rather than developing and supporting sound economic
policies.
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