In Which Professional Sports Fanatics Expose Themselves As Drug Addicts

We haven't posted in a long time but events over the past few months regarding Seattle's attempts at bringing back an NBA team (as well as NHL) brought us back to the keyboard.  Here is a brief synopsis: http://blogs.seattletimes.com/today/2012/05/public-arena-investment-capped-at-120-million-until-hockey-arrives-in-seattle/

First, my disclaimer.  I am a sports nut.  Last night while eating dinner I watched the Golf Channel play a re-run of Payne Stewart's US Open win in 1998.  I watch horse racing, hockey, softball, baseball, lacrosse (which, by the way, I still don't understand), football, basketball...but I am also very very leery of the economic model called professional sports.  It's almost as bad as the economic model banks ran on during the last decade: "make the money and run, and if you're not making money, hold someone hostage until you do."

Seattle had an NBA team until this city decided it was no longer going to be held hostage.  A mere 7 years after we spent a lot of money and sold bonds (which we are still paying off, by the way) renovating what is known as Key Arena (a legacy arena from the 1962 World's Fair) with luxury boxes for the rich and smaller seats for the rest of the public, the team ownership, a bunch of oil drenched cowboys from Oklahoma, lit out of town after paying a minimal sum for breaking the lease.  It was far too easy.

Now, a rich hedge fund guy with the "cool hip man" 48 hour no shave look waltzes into town after quietly buying up light industrial land south of downtown.  He schmoozes an unpopular mayor who sees redemption if he can land a sports team.  And of course there is a problem.  The rich hedge fund guy doesn't have enough cash to build the stadium on his own (and by the way, refuses to say who are his co-investors), so he needs the city and county bonding authority.

Listen up all you rabid sports fans in Seattle.  When you keep saying this isn't going to cost the taxpayers anything...like your credit card, public entities have a credit limit.  They can only issue so many bonds at prime interest rates (in other words, not have to pay a lot of interest).  Once that limit is hit, they have to spend a lot more money to get money.  So, in issuing $200 MILLION in bonds, that means $200 MILLION that isn't going to be used for repairing bridges, building sewers, updating transit infrastructure.  Oh, those projects may get done, it will just cost us a lot more money.

Second, all you rabid sports fans keep saying that taxpayers will not ever have to pay a bloody red cent because the bonds will be paid back with revenues from the arena.  Let me stop laughing at that one.  Over the mountains there is a town called Wenatchee who was lured by a song-and-dance man to build an arena.  They were told they would not pay a bloody red cent because revenues would cover the bonds.  Guess what?????  Here, apparently Mystery Hedge Fund Man is saying he will cover the bond payments if revenues fall short.  Of course, if revenues fall short that means he isn't making money either.  Get it?

Third, remember the professional sports model.  It isn't that the teams aren't good, or the salaries blown way out of proportion, or expenses way too high.  No, the reason they don't make money, we're told, is because there are not enough "state of the art" stuff in the facility so we have to keep re-doing the stadiums and arenas (talk about environmentally unsound).  So, mark my words, in a few short years, this state of the art arena will be a relic and Mystery Hedge Fund Man will threaten to take the team to, oh, I dunno, Wenatchee.

I heard they have an empty arena.