[jammies]

You can use the same style of argument that the ticket tax is 100% CSEC revenue to instead argue it's partially paid by the players. If the Flames charge $100 + $10 ticket tax for a game ticket, the players get 50%, or $50 of that money. If the Flames charged $110 straight up, the players would instead get $55. Since that extra $5 is redirected to pay the capital expense of the arena for CSEC by making it a "tax", you're clearly taking that money from the players!

The city is fronting the money to save CSEC some interest expenses? Oh, now the banks are making less money than they theoretically could, so now the banks are paying part of the cost! That's how it works, right, if you make less money on a transaction than the theoretical maximum, it is a cost? A guy in a Broncos jacket scalps a ticket for $200 that he bought for $110 - he just cost the Flames the $90 they could have made in the imaginary universe where they magically can tailor the price of each ticket to extract maximum profit!

There's really only one person who pays 100% of the ticket tax - the poor schmuck who buys the ticket. While there is obviously some truth that the ticket tax depresses the price of the ticket, it is not at a 1:1 ratio because of 2 things: #1, since it isn't HRR, there's double efficiency as revenue (for hockey game tickets, anyway) in paying off the loan, and #2, ticket prices aren't maximized entirely for profit, but also to fill building capacity for aesthetics and atmosphere.

PS: Not to mention that a $100 Saddledome ticket will probably cost $130 or more at the Nenshidome; you'll be setting a new floor for ticket prices which is partially decoupled from past expectations, so there'll be space to gouge AND tax your buyer without the latter much affecting the former.