The sports stadium contingent valuation literature is getting saturated. It has become well known that, in most applications, the benefits, including hard to measure "intangibles" like civic pride, do not exceed the costs. However, that is when the payment vehicle is a tax:
Emphasizing that a new venue to replace the 19-year-old Edward Jones Dome is an absolute necessity, St. Louis Rams owner Stan Kroenke revealed Monday that the team will be forced to relocate as soon as 2016 unless taxpayers build a new stadium with their bare hands. “We want to keep Rams football in St. Louis, but realistically, we can’t continue operating here unless the city’s taxpayers agree to lay a 1.3-million-square-foot concrete foundation and then construct the new stadium by hand,” said Kroenke, adding that his proposal for a state-of-the-art riverfront stadium would require at least 22 months of manual labor from each of the 320,000 residents living in St. Louis. “The facts are simple: The people of St. Louis must be prepared to personally erect the arena’s 14,000-ton steel structure, raise and paint the 30-story-tall stadium walls, screw in each of the 80,000 seats, and install a retractable roof—all while using only basic hand tools, which we would be willing to provide. Otherwise, we’ll have to consider the possibility of moving the Rams elsewhere.” At press time, sources confirmed that Kroenke’s proposal was unanimously approved by the St. Louis city council.
via www.theonion.com
This is intriguing. One could propose a willingness-to-work payment vehicle as a stadium subsidy. It is not unprecedented since it works well in developing country applications. While money is tight for most sports fans, what with the price of team jerseys and what not, they might have plenty of time available to do manual labor in support of their team. Right?
