Quote:
Originally Posted by Realtor 1
It isn't just 25k people who benefit.
Think of how busy the nightlife scene is after a flames game on a Friday or Saturday compared to a non flames game. Think of the business that thrive on 20k people moving on and looking for something else to do for the night. Think of the other 50k who get together with friends to go watch a game because they are big time fans. Sure some people may get together to watch the "seattle flames" at a pub but the aspect of it being the local team brings people out more than not having a local team.
And not all 20k are season ticket holders.... hundreds of thousands of unique faces go through the doors, not the same 20k each night.
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So what? There's disposable income allocated to local entertainment which is pretty much fixed regardless of the medium receiving it. Unless all of a sudden Calgarians are either a) going into extra debt because of the Flames, or b) generating extra disposable income because of the Flames, there is no net benefit of the Flames to the local economy.
The people who are going to clubs after Flames games are just a balance sheet. If Calgarians are spending 10% of their money on local entertainment, chances are they will continue to do so. That just means restaurants, golf courses, movie theaters, and non-Flames games drinking events will grow when hockey-tied industries shrink. Both cannot grow at the same time unless there's all of a sudden richer people with less costs. You're just moving the dollars from one entertainment economy to another, not growing both.
With an increase of taxes, that means disposable income shrinks. That shrinks the economy. Burdening citizens with an outrageous purchases does exactly that. It doesn't matter if its 25 thousand different citizens or not. There's just the X amount of dollars going towards local entertainment from Calgarians. Those are the laws of economics.
What did you think, people magically had more money just because "Flames"?