Comic Sans Sucks and So Do Sports Owners

Kshitiz Singh
Jul 22, 2017 · 8 min read

Riddle me this, Batman- why do you really watch the Golden State Warriors? You watch them because Steph Curry routinely gets hotter than the surface of the sun, and the only guy that can match his flame-throwing is his buddy in the backcourt. We watch the Cavaliers because they have that one LeBron dude, who’s alright, nothing special though, Uncle Drew’s dazzling dribbling, and of course the Henny God. Anyone ever cracked open a cold one (not with the boys though, because all your friendships are fleeting and superficial) at a New England Patriots game and prayed to the almighty Robert Krafft for granting you this cursory escape from your troubles? Nah, you went to watch Tom Bra…wait, he voted for Trump?

In any case, you root for these teams because of the players that don the uniforms. You watch sports to see LeBron play NBA Jam IRL, to watch Steph Curry’s electrifying fireworks shows, and to watch the New England Patriots trot out a dominant and ruggedly handsome football team until the end of time. You don’t watch sports to get action shots of Piss Drunk Robert Krafft. You don’t watch sports to watch Cavs owner Dan Gilbert make his most lucrative investment: salt mines. You don’t watch sports to see Los Angeles Clippers Steve Ballmer generating content for r/whitepeoplegifs (However, I’d totally pay to watch Mark Cuban at Dallas Mavericks tryouts and snap “I’m out” after someone misses a layup). You’re focused on the superhuman freaks on the court, not the pasty white dude in the front row who looks like the villain in a movie where the hero is a dog. And yet, somehow, the cartoon bad guy is the one who still makes off with most of the spoils.

Sports owners are like the Common White Girl Twitter account, reposting your Twitter masterpiece and stealing all your hard-earned clout. Warriors owner Joe Lacob purchased them for $450 million back in 2010, when they sucked, and after three (one lead) years of hitherto unheard of dominance, they’re now worth $2.6 billion . More recently, Houston Rockets owner Les Alexander put the team up for sale, expecting to net around $1.65 billion for for an $85 million investment for it back in 1993. In 1991 a dude by the name of George W. Bush turned his $606,302 (one dollar for each Iraqi he killed) investment in the Texas Rangers into $14.9 million; apparently shredding civil liberties was his side hustle. Even that racist Michael Myers-looking bozo Donald Sterling turned a team full of men who he hated into $2 billion.

Somehow nobody has made this yet

Lacob increased the value of his team nearly sixfold in seven years, despite never personally putting a butt in a seat, shooting a three-pointer, blocking a shot, or even drafting a future star. He sipped his revoltingly expensive martini from the balcony of his 750-square-foot apartment (because in the Bay, that’s all that he can afford), and watched as the fruits of Steph Curry’s labor just fell into his lap.

Sports owners start off as millionaires and end up as billionaires without lifting a finger. Players who’ve trained their entire lives for this moment leave it all out on the floor, and are forced to let some corporate ghoul scoop up most of their product. Under the current NBA collective bargaining agreement, the basketball related income (BRI) per team is split 49–51 between the players and the owners respectively. Owners who don’t perform a lick of the hard labor required for a successful NBA team literally get more than half of the profits. What’s more is that the current split is a begrudging one on the part of the owners; in 2011, the owners proposed cutting the player’s share from 57% to 47%. In response, the players refused to accept the collective bargaining agreement, and a lockout ensued. Lockouts appear to be spurred by petulant millionaires who toss around a rubber ball, but bear in mind the other dudes are literally BILLIONAIRES, groveling over an increase in the player salary cap that would amount to pocket change for them. Owners suck.


Sports teams are a huge part of the culture of any city, and the residents create an uproar to keep them. Sports owners know full well that they hold the keys to such an essential part of the city’s character and squeeze local governments for everything they have. In 2016, the St. Louis Rams made a move to the City of Angels, but not without a stout fight from the St. Louis legislature. They offered to pay for a $1.9 billion stadium with taxpayer money to keep the team. Granted, Rams owner Stan Kroenke bolted anyway and financed the stadium himself in L.A., but the fact that he A) had enough leverage over the St. Louis legislature to make them fork over billions, and B) clearly had the funds to pay for the stadium himself, is telling in and of itself. There’s no reason that anybody but Kroenke should be paying for a stadium that practically prints money for him, and only him, yet somehow he shifted the burden to the taxpayer.

NVM I take back what I said about Kroenke- he only moved the Rams to L.A. so his quarterback didn’t have to leave the bright lights of Hollywood

Paying taxes for goods that provide some kind of societal or economic good makes some sense, but stadiums don’t check either of those boxes. Moody’s Investment Service argued that Inglewood, where the new Rams stadium was built, would gain $18.7–28 million in revenue. In theory, stadiums provide construction jobs, employment when it opens, and more consumers spending money. However, esteemed Stanford economist Roger Noll contends otherwise. He notes that football stadiums in particular are seldom used (just eight regular season games + preseason +playoffs) are not enough to pay off the tax bill. Furthermore, taxes levied on the community only cover around 20% of the stadium’s cost, meaning that cities take out loans that can reach upwards of $200 million. Sure, jobs are created, but construction jobs disappear after the stadium is done and people who work in the stadium hardly reach a full workweek due to the sporadic nature of sports schedules. The raw numbers tell a misleading tale- there is no long-term tangible economic gain for those who actually paid for the stadium.

We give politicians an almost unfair amount of flack for not listening to their constituents (and rightfully so), but when it comes to sports stadiums, they act in the interest of the voter. The casual sports fan base is a powerful demographic; local politicians cave to their interests almost every time despite there literally being legal precedent to prevent this. The Tax Reform Act of 1986 attacked a number of tax havens, including publicly funded sports stadiums. It mandated that a tax on concessions sold in the arena could not cover more than 10% of the total cost of the stadium, meaning that taxes had to be raised elsewhere to compensate. The Atlanta Falcons, for example, implemented a hotel/motel tax to cover the costs of the stadium. Logistically, this should have incentivized local governments to allow sports teams to walk, because the taxes wouldn’t be worth it. However, these impacts have never actually materialized- the rabid sports fandom is all powerful. The owners leverage this to coerce the public to pay for the stadium because if they don’t, they’ll feel it at the ballot box.

Now, because governments are essentially forced to build the stadium, they need space to do it, and land is a finite resource and often owned by other people. Luckily, those hooligans who wrote the Constitution foresaw billionaire exploitation of city councils, and gave the government an out: eminent domain- where the government can seize private property for public use. Governments are handcuffed to the stadium’s construction and invoke eminent domain to obtain a large enough patch of land to build an arena where big sweaty dudes duel a few times per year. A team of investors led by soccer star David Beckham built a major league soccer stadium in Miami and to do so, the city government tore down apartments, a dozen or so houses, and a daycare. I’m no policy analyst but I figure that the community doesn’t benefit from their houses being razed. And to twist the knife even further, the families who lost their homes pay taxes to fund the stadium. If the government doesn’t build the stadium to keep the team, the city loses an essential part of its history, and no politician wants to be associated with that. So, they figure that bulldozing a few houses is a low enough opportunity cost, even though there are no tangible gains for the community whose going to end up footing the bill. Meanwhile, the owner watches with a crooked smile as the cash just rolls into his pockets.

Replace private property with lululemon and this would be dumb lit

So what’s the solution? Unlike city councils, billionaire owners are mobile and hold all the cards when it comes to negotiations about keeping the team there. They can leave anytime they want, at no cost, because someone will build the stadium for them. Clearly, the issue revolves around the power vested in the owner, and the only way to curb this power would be to eliminate the source altogether. Sean McElwee, policy analyst for Demos, proposed that each player pool 10% of their salaries over 50 or so years and buy the team, and whatever was left would be owned by the community. Because the value of the team constantly increases, there is always room to add more players to the pool. For obvious reasons, this is probably impossible, unless Congress passes the Means of Production Appropriations and Re-Allocation Act (not gonna pretend like I’m smart enough to come up with this one). However, the key to expunging these parasites is to end any financial incentive they have to own the team. Otherwise, in 2018, when LeBron inevitably bolts and legally changes his name to Big Baller Bron, we’re gonna have to witness Dan Gilbert try to make Comic Sans cool again.

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