Economic benefits of NFL stadium boom are 'vastly overblown'

New NFL stadiums are steadily getting more expensive. (David Foster/Oath)
New NFL stadiums are steadily getting more expensive. (David Foster/Oath)

Perhaps you saw the many mocking social media posts last weekend pointing out the rows and rows of empty seats at the LA Rams and LA Chargers games in Week 2 of the NFL season. Both teams are playing in temporary homes — the Rams in LA Coliseum, a college stadium, and the Chargers in StubHub Center in Carson, Calif., a soccer stadium — until they move into LA Stadium at Hollywood Park, projected to open up in 2020 and cost $2.6 billion.

The Chargers got 25,381 fans at a stadium that holds 27,000, while the Rams only attracted 56,612 to a stadium that holds more than 90,000. As many stories pointed out, the two NFL games combined had a smaller in-person audience than the USC vs. Texas college football game Saturday night at the Coliseum, attended by 85,000 people. (The empty NFL seats were “not a great look,” the AP wrote.)

The reasonable conclusion from the low turnout might be that LA doesn’t have enough NFL fans to support two new teams. And that, in turn, may look like a reminder of how outrageous the trend is of teams relocating and building $2 billion-plus stadiums, and, often, obtaining public money to help build them.

But it doesn’t really matter if the new LA stadium doesn’t fill up for games. The pricey stadium trend is likely to continue, because cities — which consist of local construction companies to trade unions to bank branches to architecture firms to hotels — see appeal in having an NFL team and stadium.

“Not a very good economic proposition”

It’s about enhancing the culture and image of the city, says Andrew Zimbalist, a sports economist at Smith College in Massachusetts, and author of a wide range of books that strip back the financial impact of sports arenas and major events like the World Cup and Olympics.

“The main reason you want the stadium is because you want the team, and the main reason you want the team is because in United States culture these days, football is particularly prominent,” says Zimbalist. “What a sports team does is provide some coherence to a city’s culture. It provides a common thread that helps people in the community relate to each other. It enhances the city’s identity. People now have a way to relate to each other… A large percentage of the people in the community are experiencing the football team. That’s a very important function of the culture, to me. Now, some people might argue that, ‘Gee, it’s too bad, we need other kinds of culture instead of football culture.'”

[Zimbalist is the special guest on Episode 3 of our Sportsbook podcast on the business of football. You can listen here or scroll to the bottom of this post.]