Hey, CC Sabathia, can you spare your team a dime?
How about you, Mark Teixeira? Got an extra million or two lying around so the suites at the new Yankee Stadium can get the designer touch your fans deserve?
It seems like only yesterday that the Yankees shelled out nearly a half billion dollars for a trio of players they hope will entice the remaining rich of New York to shell out a lot of money for the pleasure of watching them play. There was a muted outcry that the Yankees had gone too far, but the general consensus was that if any team could afford to throw out so many millions, it was the guys in pinstripes.
Turns out there was a reason – taxpayers are helping foot the bill.
Not all of it, of course. Even in today’s tanking economy, there are plenty of people still willing to spend $2,500 on a front-row seat behind home plate, and the Yankees will end up picking up much of the tab for the new stadium itself.
eam that was so generous with its players now wants New York taxpayers to be even more generous than they already have been in helping fund for a stadium built for the singular purpose of making the Yankees even more money.
A billion dollars, it seems, just doesn’t buy what it used to.
The Yankees are going back hat-in-hand this week to ask the city for another $259 million in tax-exempt bonds on top of the $940 million in similar bonds they’ve already gotten for the new stadium, saying the extra money is needed, among other things, to pay for a state-of-the-art big screen and to properly finish off the stadium’s luxury suites.
Now I’m no economist, but doesn’t something seem a little off here?
Just weeks after committing some $423.5 million for Sabathia, Teixeira and A.J. Burnett, the Yankees need to float nearly that much in bonds at taxpayer expense just to finish the stadium? Couldn’t they reach out to their new players and get a loan from them instead?
Forget about the cost overruns that upped the stadium tab to $1.3 billion. Who’s doing their books? Bernard Madoff?
the issue becoming a political, er, football, the fact remains that the city of New York and its taxpayers are heavily subsidizing the stadium, too.
They’re hardly setting a precedent. Since the Baltimore Orioles soaked taxpayers for the first retro stadium, Camden Yards, in 1992, baseball owners have managed to con the public in 17 other cities for new parks of their own. In almost all cases, the majority of the money spent on these new stadiums has come from taxes or fees imposed for just that purpose.
In the case of Yankee Stadium, it will be the Yankees paying off the bonds. But because they’re tax free, it means the bonds will carry lower interest rates and the team will avoid spending tens of millions of dollars it would have otherwise had to pay on the borrowed money.
When everything is included, it adds up pretty quick. Figures released by the city’s Independent Budget Office tallied a whopping total public subsidy at more than $500 million, with another quarter billion dollars or so for the Mets’ new stadium in Queens.
e struggling for enough money to provide the most basic services, I’d lean toward outrage.
The only good news is the economic meltdown might eventually force the Yankees to come up with a more reasonable pricing model. With 800 of 4,300 premium seats still available for sale and seven luxury suites still unsold, the team has hired a real estate agency to market some of its high-priced wares.
Act now and you can get a 20-game package for $7,000 a seat. Buy four and you can take the family out for under $2,000 a game, assuming they don’t buy too many souvenirs.
Plenty cheap, unless you consider you’re already paying for the stadium anyway.
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Tim Dahlberg is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at tdahlbergap.org
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