Comment by NalNezumi | Hacker News Reader

Comment by NalNezumi | Hacker News Reader

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If you're going to make the argument "There's other benefit to the society that also need to be considered" then you also have to consider the negatives of a stadium. There's a lot of negative aspects that follow building a stadium, too.

I can't on the top of my head show any figures, but a classmate of mine that lived in the suburb with a stadium, a place everyone considered "the ghetto" because of crime rate, said it wasn't as bad as people said it to be; with the notable exception, and he was very clear about this:

when there's a football match going on in the new stadium close by, every family in the vicinity knew not to let their kids out (or go out on the night) because the city got too unsafe to walk around because of supporters/drunk hooligans trashing places and being violent. (risk of getting robbed, raped, assaulted went notably up every time there was a match that stretched in to the night)

The stadium to the locals felt like a net-negative. Bars and night life owners where happy, but to ordinary citizen it meant more crime, trashed streets, vandalized walls/shops + the immeasurable effect of the stereotype that got attached ("high concentration of immigrants = high crime rate")

I live close to a smaller stadium and recently rode past it while a game was being played. The number of police deployed there was insane, I estimate a ratio of 1 police per 10 visitors. The first thought that went through my head was that this could not possibly be worth it. Paying wages of the police alone has to absolutely dwarf ticket costs.

But I guess it's worth it when you factor in that without security, football fans might trash the place and mess other people up like you describe.

In my country those stadiums are just a money transfer schemes from public pockets via local government to local pockets. They have no problem building "temporary" stadiums while the old ones are "renovated" for hundreds of millions of dollars of tax payer's money. You cannot normally even visit the stadiums when there's no match being played. As you said, they usually need hundreds of riot police present each time because there is almost always vandalism and fighting. Those stadiums are not used for anything else. For example, I cannot ask the soccer team if I could use the pitch for say a day because I want to organize a drone racing competition. I would be laughed out of the room. As the other posters said, they just take my money and give it to some other persons who are living very luxurious. I know, Ferraris are expensive.

However, I understand that those sport events are like a safety valve on a pressure cooker. It lets those aggressive members of the community to vent so they don't realize how fucked they are in their daily lives. It something like a pacifier for those people. It is bread and circuses, and the bread is getting smaller and smaller.

That said, if the local government is spending money on (pretty much private) stadiums, then I would postulate that they have too much money and the taxes are too high.

I used to live near a stadium and can echo that. Depended on what it was used for too. If it was a concert it usually made the neighborhood fun and lively. If it was for a hockey game then the neighborhood was awful.

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