[EddyBeers]

http://www.businessweek.com/news/201...d-s-long-finds

The book, released last month by Routledge, aims to help governments and taxpayers to reduce hidden subsidies to team owners by allowing them to compare stadium deals for their cities against those elsewhere. The average public-private partnership worked out to cost cities 78 percent and the teams 22 percent, she wrote.

The public is at a disadvantage in negotiating those deals with sports teams and leagues, which have a monopoly on the supply of franchises and opaque finances, Long writes. The total cost of sport facilities has received little attention from researchers in part “because most economic analyses demonstrate that sports facilities produce very few or no net new economic benefits relative to construction costs alone, and so, in this sense, more accurate cost estimates would only serve to reinforce a case already made.”