21 May 2014
This isn't your grandfather's football stadium
The video above was used by the management of the Minnesota Vikings in their (successful!) bid to host the 2018 Super Bowl.
As I watched the computer graphics of the pending new stadium, I couldn't help but wonder what the early titans of the game (Vince Lombardi, Bud Grant, George Halas) would have thought about how the NFL has morphed from a game to a business.
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Oh, you mean there's a football game buried somewhere deep in this circus, too? Cool!
ReplyDeleteIt's a GREAT game. All the rest leaves me cold.
Taxpayer subsidies are the worst part of this, cities and states that trip over each other out-spending/out-gifting everyone else in their efforts to persuade billionaire owners bless the local constituency with a team... Or, even more disturbing, billionaire owners who histrionically threaten to pack the team up and leave unless the local taxpayers build a bigger and glitzier stadium, forgo property and business taxes, waive any right to rent and concession revenues...
If it's a business, run it as a business. If you can't afford a new stadium, team, play in the old one. If you can't make money when you pay rent and taxes like other businesses, take a hard look at what you're doing wrong, and change it.
Blah.
And, all of the people in the special boxes look like run-of-the-mill fans who sit down in the bleachers, when the real reason why the owners wanted a new stadium was so that they could sell space in those special boxes for LOTS and LOTS of money.
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