Why Should We Subsidize NFL Fat Cats?

With the new sports arena apparently on its way toward construction, we students of sports now turn our attention to an even bigger game, a National Football League franchise for Los Angeles.

My particular examination began with an item in a column by my sports colleague Randy Harvey, who wrote about a proposal to lease the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum to a developer for $1 a year as part of a plan to remodel the old stadium for use by an NFL team.

This seemed like a real bargain for the developer, certainly much less than a ticket to a ballgame. It would be, in fact, an outrageous giveaway. But, having dealt with the sports business, I knew nothing is too outrageous for NFL team owners, a bunch of private enterprisers who love public subsidies.

So I began checking it out.

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The $1-a-year figure had surfaced at a legislative committee hearing conducted by Sen. Richard Polanco (D-Los Angeles) to look into the football situation. I had been on vacation during the hearing, so I asked Bill Mabie, Polanco’s chief aide, about the figure.

He handed me a document prepared by the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency at the request of L.A. City Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, a leading advocate of the Coliseum plan.

On page 14, the document said, “Our proposal is that the stadium site, Exposition Park parking and adjacent grounds will be long-term leased to and placed totally under the control of the owner/developer for $1 a year.” It also said “a long-term lease to the owner/developer of the existing Sports Arena site is also a distinct possibility.”

The redevelopment agency projected that the Coliseum could be remodeled for the NFL team for $280 million, far less than building a new stadium, because the developer wouldn’t have to buy the land.

This is a lot of money, but it sounded like it might be within the financial reach of the developers tentatively involved in the project. They are the ones who put together the downtown arena deal. Ed Roski Jr. is reportedly worth several million; Phillip Anschutz was reported by Forbes magazine to be worth $5.2 billion.

But even though he and Anschutz encountered controversy in seeking even minimal government help for the downtown arena, Roski clearly feels he will need government financial aid for the Coliseum remodeling.

He said that when he first proposed taking over the Coliseum project, he felt it could be financed privately. After further examination, though, he said, “I don’t know how you can do it.”

But Roski has a plan. He intends to ask the Legislature and Gov. Pete Wilson to approve something called “sports entertainment zones.” Sales tax revenues earned by new attractions in such zones would be used to pay off bonds floated to build the facilities.

In the Coliseum entertainment zone, a bond issue would help finance the stadium remodeling. Presumably the revamped stadium, with its 10,000 expensive club seats and 140 even more expensive luxury boxes, would produce enough sales tax revenue to repay the bonds sold to finance the stadium remodeling.

The sales tax is a state levy, for statewide uses--education, welfare, prisons, parks and other programs that benefit all of California. To divert any sales tax money for a local sports facility would attract a lot of opposition in Sacramento.

“This is going to be a hard sell,” said Assemblyman Rod Wright, (D-Los Angeles), who represents the Coliseum area and wants an NFL team to play there. “Why should a lady who lives in Fresno care about L.A. having a football team?”

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Personally, I don’t like any public subsidy for the fat and happy NFL and its millionaire owners.

We learned from the downtown arena deal that these sports entrepreneurs have plenty of potential profits socked away in obscure corners of their transactions. Anschutz and Roski, for example, never told us they could sell the rights to name the arena for $150 million or more. Who knows what opportunities will be found in a complex football stadium transaction?

But don’t bet against government aid.

For the fight is shifting from the highly visible confines of Los Angeles City Hall to the state Capitol.

The site of the Coliseum is owned by the state and operated by the Coliseum Commission, composed of representatives of the state, the city of Los Angeles and Los Angeles County.

“The state is the unquestioned landlord,” Wright said.

If there is a taxpayer subsidy, it must be approved by the Legislature and Wilson, not the City Council and Mayor Richard Riordan.

That makes it more difficult to track the action from back here in Los Angeles, and possibly easier for Anschutz and Roski to get a subsidy. Deals in Sacramento can be more complex, and have a completely different set of players than those in City Hall. Compared to what we’ve seen, the corridors of power up there are a real maze.