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.
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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