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Washington Post columnist Sally Jenkins wrote a column last week blasting the NFL for the extravagance of Super Bowl week, accusing them of spending to much money. In the column, she took at shot at the Jets/Giants.
Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post, wrote the following item about the New Meadowlands. It was another one of those columns ripping the billionaire/multi-millionaire owners.
“When an owner grows tired of a facility and leaves, guess who picks up the tab? asked Jenkins. “New Jersey still owes $110 million on the old Meadowlands home of the New York Giants and Jets, and when both teams moved to their new $1.6 billion, privately financed stadium, they got a huge tax break. According to the Wall Street Journal under their old agreement they paid $20 million a year in tax revenues; now they will pay only about $6 million a year. Know what New Jersey’s deficit is? I’ll tell you: $36 billion.”
When I read the part about the state still owing $110 million on the old stadium, which was demolished last year, it sounded a little high to me. So I reached out to an executive with one of the two teams to get their reaction to this.
“Giants Stadium cost $75 million to build – the state of New Jersey used Giants Stadium as its ATM machine to finance projects from Atlantic City to Monmouth and beyond,” said the unnamed executive. “The $110 outstanding wasn’t for the construction of Giants Stadium, it was for the construction of other projects all over the state,”
How on earth could the state still owe $110 million on a stadium that cost $75 million to build 35 years ago? I’m not economist, but that made zero sense. That sounds like misleading numbers, perhaps from the union, to make a couple of owners look bad.
So is the new stadium good or bad for the state?
“I don’t know how much the state benefits from the Jets’ and Giants’ presence here, but it’s a lot,” the executive said. “We pay sales tax and our players pay income tax. To suggest that the only money the state gets from the two organizations is the payment in lieu of taxes is incorrect. And to suggest we are the only companies that make payments in lieu of taxes is also incorrect. That is how a state attracts corporations to set up shop.”
But while the Jets and Giants were perhaps unfair criticized by Jenkins, I’m not going to sit here and defend their decision to build a new stadium for close to $1.7 billion.
If the teams knew that they were going to have to charge such crazy prices for PSL’s and tickets, they should have just stayed in the old stadium. No matter how teams spin it, the PSL strategy is a basically a glorified shake-down.
And aside from the PSL’s being a flawed concept, the other issue with new stadiums is they are having a negative impact on the CBA talks. Owners like Woody Johnson, John Mara and others, spent a fortune on some of these new stadiums, and now they want the players to foot some of the bill in a re-worked CBA.
And that doesn’t make much sense either.