Little Public Support

Entering this NFL season, California’s three franchises—the 49ers, Oakland Raiders, and San Diego Chargers—all seek new stadiums. So does the city of Los Angeles, which remains only a viable venue away from one, and perhaps two, NFL teams.

This would be a challenging situation in boom times, which these decidedly aren’t. With the state issuing $2 billion in IOUs and its municipalities attempting to remedy shortfalls with unprecedented firings, layoffs, and service cutbacks, public funding for sports venues ranks as low as it ever has on most civic to-do lists, and maybe even lower than that in terms of public perception.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has met with task forces in several markets, “But it’s very tough to have the state get involved in those things,” he said recently. “Because of our financial situation that we are in, we’re not about to go and say ‘Yes, we’re going to help financially build a stadium.’ It wouldn’t make any sense. People would be outraged.”

Not surprisingly, local politicians are reading the same script.

“With all of the tremendous enthusiasm that people have about sports and sports teams, they realize that we’re in economic trouble,” said Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums, whose city’s revenue fell $51 million in 2008, helping to create an overall budget deficit of $144 million—or more than Santa Clara’s entire proposed contribution to the 49ers. “Getting voters to approve millions and millions of dollars for a stadium at a time when we have all these problems is just unrealistic. It won’t happen."

“We want our teams here, and we want Oakland to benefit from their presence. But do we have money to pay for the stadium? The answer is no, my friend.”

This aversion to public funding, which an executive of one California franchise calls a “political third rail,” hasn’t come overnight. Baseball’s Giants failed to get substantial public funding for a new facility and almost left town before agreeing to build their own ballpark a decade ago. And even support for the sold-out 49ers wanes when brought to a public vote. In 1997, San Franciscans voted on a $100 million contribution toward a mixed-use development and stadium proposed by DeBartolo (a development that was never built because DeBartolo was forced to relinquish control of the team shortly afterward and the Yorks apparently didn’t have the same appetite for risk). The measure passed, but only by some 1,500 votes.

“We had unbelievable cachet at that time because of the five Super Bowl trophies on our shelf and the future Hall of Famers who were either part of the team or just retired,” said Carmen Policy, who ran the 49ers for DeBartolo and now consults for the city of San Francisco in an effort to get a stadium built there. “We were the toast of the town. And you saw how close it was. So I think the chance of public money today is absolutely out of the question.”

During a presentation at a recent NFL meeting, Raiders CEO Amy Trask cautioned league owners not to underestimate the difficulties inherent in doing a deal in California, difficulties that help to explain why all three of the current NFL stadiums are at least four decades old. New taxes enacted by the state or a municipality require a two-thirds vote, not a mere majority. Environmental reviews are onerous and expensive. Voters, through ballot initiatives, occasionally decide not to fund schools, let alone stadiums.

But it also may be that California, as it often does, is showing the rest of the country its future. This economic downturn is national, not regional, and cities and states haven’t just frozen budgets, but slashed them. The next two new NFL venues to open, in Dallas and New Jersey, will have been built largely with private dollars, while prospects of legislative funding in Minnesota appear dim. In Seattle, lawmakers refused to approve funding for a new basketball arena, letting the NBA’s SuperSonics depart for Oklahoma after more than 40 years.