Quote:
Originally Posted by Locke
This is one of the few times that I dont really agree with Oliver.
He takes a bit of a hard-line stance that just doesnt seem reasonable. The fact of the matter is, as I alluded to in a previous post, there are benefits to having professional sports teams around. They do 'spread the wealth' albeit in a very difficult to quantify way.
But you cant be held ransom by them. There are a lot of ways that municipalities or jurisdictions benefit from Pro sports teams and they can facilitate that benefit through cooperation, but the revenue model has to be revamped and I think significant importance should be placed on standardizing subsidization deals.
Like a hard 'Salary Cap' on Government aid to sports teams.
You cant have places shooting money out of a T-Shirt cannon at sports teams and then having every other team in every other jurisdiction expecting the same.
It sucks to say, and its just purely my opinion, but the worst thing to happen to the Calgary Flames' arena proposals was the Edmonton Oilers' arena deal.
It was just so, so sweet and the Flames/CSEC wanted the same deal and in no reasonable universe were they going to get it.
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Agreed on the Oilers stupid deal giving the Flames the greenlight to push and push year after year for a deal that wasn't coming from Calgary.
But just to note, I didn't agree with the hardline stance of "just say no" to public funding, but did agree with the overall message that cities should not be paying hundreds of millions towards public stadiums while city infrastructure and programs crumble around a billion dollar stadium.
The point about Detroit declaring bankruptcy a few months before agreeing to spend $324mil towards the area project was absurd.