MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred recently bungled not by believing communities need to be willing to pay for sports stadiums but by saying it out loud. It’s something that doesn’t ever need to be said, because it’s a given.
In Western New York, for example, it was a given that the Bills would have moved without free money to build their new stadium. In an interview with Tim O’Shei of the Buffalo News, Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz made that belief crystal clear.
“The NFL is a business,” Poloncarz said, via Sports Business Journal. “You’re negotiating with one of 32 of the owners of the business. They have the ability, like a lot of the other businesses that we’ve seen in our town, to move if they feel it’s better for them. They have a business goal in mind, which is, in general, to make as much money as possible. They can make more money if they move elsewhere. I don’t think the Pegulas would have built the stadium for themselves here in Western New York if we told them to go pound salt. I think they would have moved their team, because the history of the NFL is that’s what happens.”
Indeed it is. If one community won’t do what a given team wants, that team will find another community. The Raiders did it with Las Vegas. The Chargers did it with San Diego. The Ravens (Browns) did it with Cleveland. The Rams did it with L.A. The Colts did it with Baltimore.
Only in St. Louis did Rams owner Stan Kroenke ignore an objectively acceptable offer including taxpayer money to build his own, self-funded venue elsewhere.
The next hot spot is Jacksonville, followed in time by Carolina. There will always be another team looking for a new or improved stadium, and typically looking for someone else to pay for it. Usually, someone else does. Or that team will have its stadium paid for by a different someone else.