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RJ Boccomino

Professor Heuton

POLS 2000 Urban Studies Sec. 3

April 10, 2021

Urban Studies Term Paper

Sports, the last bastion of escape in the United States. At least it was, until the COVID-19

pandemic. Sports were impacted starting March 11, 2020, when the first major sporting event

between the Oklahoma City Thunder and Utah Jazz was postponed. This led to a domino effect

of sports leagues postponing and cancelling their seasons shortly after. Before the COVID-19

pandemic hit in March 2020, nearly 150 million individuals attended professional sporting

events in 2018 across the five major sports leagues.1 As sports resumed in July, we saw games

played without fans - empty seats throughout Major League Baseball, tarped off seating with big

advertisements in the NHL, and a “bubble” like atmosphere for the NBA playoffs. Stadiums and

arenas that would normally hold between 10,000 to 100,000 fans now have gone a year without

holding capacity, whether it be from big sporting events, concerts, or any other sort of event that

would normally be held in these colossal multi-hundred million dollar stadiums built in the last

20 years. Now they sit as empty buildings in metropolitan areas. Even as fans have begun to be

welcomed back into sports stadiums polling shows that among self-identified sports fans, 27

percent of respondents said they would be either “very” or “somewhat” comfortable going to a

game.2 With the slow return to normalcy in sports this leads to the nature of this assessment.

What do sports arenas/stadiums bring for the cities they reside in? Are these mostly city-funded

1
According to the US Travel Association, 2019.
2
Silverman, 2021.
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stadiums a sign of prosperity and revitalization for a city? Or do they in turn have a negative

impact, causing blight and more or less “window dressing” for poorer areas?

This issue at hand is significant because on the surface we tend to believe in simple

solutions. We tend to believe in the mantra of, “If you build it, they will come,” when discussing

intricate issues like urban redevelopment and city revitalization. It’s very easy to believe that a

brand new $863 million dollar stadium3 can bring economic success but it’s not that simple to

create prosperity so quickly. In many ways if the mindset is that building a stadium will bring

prosperity, then many people in that city will be taken advantage of. In turn, it may cause some

long term blight and other issues for the city itself. Detroit is an example of this issue as the

argument can be made that the city has dealt with both the negative impacts of a team leaving the

city for a suburb (The Detroit Pistons left the city in 1978 for the city of Pontiac and then the

suburb of Auburn Hills before returning back to Detroit in 2017) and also the impact of a brand

new stadium being built with the promises of bringing prosperity in the idea of “District Detroit.”

In reality, it has turned into a part of Midtown that is mostly ignored by locals and only busy

during big events as suburbanites flock to sporting events or concerts.

With some prior knowledge, personal experience, and further research the

recommendation I have is a quite simple solution. Do not just let private companies and

billionaires pressure cities into paying for publicly funded stadiums. Instead, the money that

residents pay in taxes should be focused on improving their city as a whole by investing in

schools, local businesses, and public services. Public-funded stadiums tend to siphon off tax

revenue that is desperately needed in other systems that may not have the same amount of

revenue as a professional sports team which is one of the results of Little Caesars Arena. Another

problematic aspect of the Little Caesars Arena development is the use of tax increment financing
3
Price of Little Caesars Arena based off of Detroit Free Press article by Joe Gullien. 9/6/2017.
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(TIF) to the detriment of the city’s public school system. TIF essentially redirects taxpayer money

away from vital City services to support profit-seeking activities. This is particularly troubling

for Detroit, which has struggled with poor public school performance and its effects on

enrollment and families.38 By 2051, $726 million of property tax revenue will be diverted from

state and local public school funds to pay for the redevelopment.4 Public-funded stadiums in turn

promise prosperity for very small parts of a city, causing social blight on the city's services. With

that cause and effect, it is an easy decision to make owners of these sports teams pay for the new

stadiums themselves. These stadiums are used as corporations, whose owners basically print

money hand over fist and increase profits every year. Publicly funded stadiums in cities like

Detroit, Oakland, and Baltimore have shown negative economic impact on their cities. The

residents of the city foot some of the bill for these stadiums that many are outpriced from even

attending. It is considerably a myth that stadiums can revitalize a downtown purely on it’s own

merit. It is a simple and very much illogical solution to a complex issue such as city

revitalization, especially when a team that occupies the arena is not very competitive. From

experience, we see this with Detroit’s Little Caesars Arena, home of the NHL’s Detroit Redwings

and NBA’s Detroit Pistons. Branded the “District Detroit,” it was supposed to revitalize the

Downtown Area of Detroit. Four years later, both teams are averaging near the bottom of the

league and the “new stadium” appeal of the arena seems to have worn off. In fact, Little Caesars

Arena has been criticized for changing the seat colors in the arena from red to black in order to

hide the lackluster interests in the teams that call Little Caesars Arena home. The red seats have

been noteworthy for highlighting empty seats during Detroit Red Wings and Detroit Pistons

telecasts, although both franchises say fans are dispersed throughout the arena in clubs and

4
Cho, 2018.
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bars.5 Driving through Midtown before the COVID-19 pandemic, whether just to get out for a

nice drive or in between classes at Wayne State, Little Caesars Arena always seemed to feel like

a private corporation building rather than the public multi-purpose arena Detroit was promised.

Little Caesars Arena seems to be lackluster and “cookie-cutter” in its build that really doesn’t

attract locals or visitors including suburbanites who will make the trip in and out of the city of

Detroit for a night with most of the money they spend going towards the billionaires’ businesses

rather than to the local economy of the city. In some ways, the arena may impact and hurt local

businesses more as the Illitch family, Tom Gores, and Dan Gilbert - some of the most wealthy

people in the city - have continued to buy out local businesses and invest in only certain parts of

the city that can net a profit for their businesses. In spite of the claims of public benefit, the Little

Caesars Arena may not contribute much to the City’s fiscal condition or to its residents outside of

the 7.2 square miles of concentrated redevelopment. America’s cities and metropolitan areas are

already marked by intense stratification.6 The combined ownerships of the Illitch’s, Gores, and

Gilbert have an Amazon-like effect to the city as the three billionaires end up buying up and

monopolizing city land for the value and then profit off it when they build out of priced housing

for wealthy populations which can drive gentrification or in many of the Illitch’s projects

bulldoze the land for endless parking lots and structures for the publicly-funded arena they built

as so does happen many times when a new stadium is built removing land that could be used for

housing, retail, restaurants, etc. Private parking lots add to this area. What surrounds these

stadia? Often nothing of consequence. Residential development views stadia as a form of

nuisance and chooses to locate as far away as possible. Retail outlets will not choose to locate

near stadia if stadia are their only means of survival. These are preconditions for blight.7

5
Ellis, 2018.
6
Cho, 2018.
7
Nelson, 2001.
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While the upgraded Little Caesars Arena was definitely needed for the aging Joe Louis

Arena, I do look at the move to be somewhat of a cautionary tale to other cities in talks with their

local teams owners about footing the bill on a new stadium proposal. While in some cases there

seems to be a positive economic impact of a new stadium cities should be as careful with rubber

stamping any price tag on a proposed new stadium that may be offered up by some sports owner

in their town. Cities and it’s residents should be very careful when team owners ask for

publicly-funded stadiums and throw out numbers that sound impressive but are in reality most

likely non-binding and inflated. If they don’t they may be footed an expensive bill for a structure

that more or less is simply a profit for the owners of the stadium rather than the city and the

people as a whole.
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Bibliography

Cho, Grace. Aspirations of Economic Resilience: An Analysis of the Infuriating Logic of

Detroit's Little Caesars Arena Development, April 14, 2018.

https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/handle/2027.42/143826.

Ellis, Vince. “Little Caesars Arena Doing Away With Red Seats.” Detroit Free Press.

Detroit Free Press, October 9, 2018.

https://www.freep.com/story/sports/2018/10/08/little-caesars-arena-red-seats-lower-bowl-at

tendance/1573228002/.

Guillen, Joe. “Little Caesars Arena: How the Cost Nearly Doubled to $863 Million.”

Detroit Free Press. Detroit Free Press, September 7, 2017.

https://www.freep.com/story/money/business/2017/09/06/little-caesars-arena-detroit-cost/6

16890001/.

Nelson, Arthur C. “Prosperity or Blight? A Question of Major League Stadia Locations -

Arthur C. Nelson, 2001.” SAGE Journals, August 2001.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/089124240101500305.

Silverman, Alex. “Vast Majority of Americans Still Uncomfortable Attending Games One

Year After COVID-19 Stopped Sports.” Morning Consult, March 9, 2021.

https://morningconsult.com/2021/03/10/sports-attendance-covid-one-year-later/.

“The Impact Of Sports On The Travel Industry.” Accessed April 11, 2021.

https://www.ustravel.org/system/files/media_root/document/2019_Sports-Travel_07.11.19.

pdf.