(p. A21) ALBANY, N.Y. — New York State officials have reached a deal with the Buffalo Bills to use $850 million in public funds to help the team build a $1.4 billion stadium — the largest taxpayer contribution ever for a pro football facility.
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. . ., the negotiations over a new stadium rekindled a bitter debate about whether government should be in the business of subsidizing arenas for professional sports teams; economic research has found that sports stadiums have rarely had a substantial impact, if any impact at all, on overall economic growth.
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“To say you’re going to spend $850 million to get economic impacts, you’re playing on people’s emotions and not dealing with reality,” said Mark Rosentraub, a professor of sport management at the University of Michigan. “In the end, it’s nothing more than a subsidy to the N.F.L.”
Public assistance, in the form of tax breaks and free land, has been used to finance the construction of arenas for New York sports teams, but many of the teams, from the Yankees to the Mets, have financed most of the costs themselves. The Giants and the Jets, who play in New Jersey, paid for nearly all of their stadium, which opened in 2010.
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(Note: the online version of the story has the date March 28, 2022, and has the title “Buffalo Bills Strike Deal for Taxpayer-Funded $1.4 Billion Stadium.”)