BRENT BATTEN

Brent Batten: Oakland, Collier both refuse to aid rich athletes, team owners

Brent Batten
brent.batten@naplesnews.com; 239-263-4776

There are obvious differences between Collier County and Oakland, California’s Alameda County.

Collier’s population is about 330,000 while Alameda’s is 1.6 million.

The median age here is 46, there 36.

By race, Collier County is 83 percent white, 1 percent Asian. Alameda County is 51 percent white, 30 percent Asian.

But the two counties have at least one thing in common — an aversion to shelling out millions of tax dollars to subsidize billionaire businessmen and millionaire athletes who play sports for a living.

The big news out of the NFL this week is that the storied Oakland Raider franchise is leaving the city for Las Vegas.

More: Las Vegas just the latest move for vagabond Raiders

The main reason for the move is Oakland’s refusal to shell out the requisite amount for a new stadium.

After the move was approved by the league Monday, one sports commentator said he felt terrible for Raiders owner Mark Davis, with words to the effect, “I know how badly he wanted to keep the team in Oakland.”

That’s nonsense. If Davis had wanted to keep the team in Oakland, all he had to do was nothing. The team would have stayed in Oakland. The city was working on a plan to donate land for a stadium and arrange private financing, so he stood to get the new stadium he desires.

The more appropriate analysis would have been, “I feel terrible for Mark Davis. I know how badly he wanted to make as much money off the Raiders as possible and if he could have done that and stayed in Oakland, that would have been his preference.”

More: What next for cities abandoned by NFL teams?

Study after study has shown that when it comes to the bottom line, massive taxpayer subsidies for professional sports stadiums don’t pay off in terms of tax revenue generated or even overall economic activity.

The only way they show a positive return on investment is if you factor in intangibles, such as the prestige of being home to an NFL team or a Major League Baseball spring training host.

But how much is prestige worth? It’s difficult to put a dollar amount on it. Exposure to the rest of the nation via game broadcasts has a value, too, but the analysts haven’t been able to find a way to quantify it.

Earlier this year, Collier County commissioners said no thanks to a plan to bring Atlanta Braves spring training to Collier County. It would have entailed about $100 million in tax money to build the complex, which could have served as a sports venue for local and regional events when not hosting professional baseball.

More: After Collier says no, Atlanta Braves find home in Sarasota

Like other proposals before it, it failed to generate traction with voters and their representatives because of the previously mentioned aversion.

Interestingly, Collier commissioners on Tuesday approved the next step forward in a plan to build a sports complex purely for local and regional use. Like the spring training plan, it will require an increase in the tax charged on short-term rentals, and its overall cost could be nearly as high as the Braves complex would have been.

But because the clientele will be kids and grown-ups playing kids games for fun, there is no backlash, no bitter taste that would accompany a plan to help profitable sports franchises be more profitable.

The NFL has its own reasons for approving the move to Las Vegas. Each of the other 31 team owners stands to make more than $10 million from a required relocation fee alone.

More: NFL owners approve Raiders' move to Las Vegas, so what now?

In doing so, the league chose to set aside concerns over the connection between pro football and gambling raised by having a franchise in the nation’s gambling mecca.

Another analyst pointed out that tens of thousands of people live and work in Las Vegas and don’t get into trouble with gambling or partying.

True enough, but how many of those tens of thousands are young, single celebrities with millions of dollars in the bank?

The Raiders are the third NFL team to announce a change of cities in the past three months.

In each case, voters or their representatives in the old city rejected the idea of paying for a new stadium, while the new cities agreed to bigger, better stadia built at considerable taxpayer expense.

Each episode represents another reminder that pro sports franchises are businesses, with a perfectly legitimate interest in enhancing their own bottom lines. Loyalty to the fan base and economic well-being of the host community is an afterthought at best.

Elected leaders in Oakland and Collier County alike have been wise to recognize that.

Connect with Brent Batten at brent.batten@naplesnews.com, on Twitter@NDN_BrentBatten and at facebook.com/ndnbrentbatten.