Zombie Teams and Zombie Owners

This chapter talks about how owners of teams are passing the costs of owning sports teams (in this case Los Angeles Dodgers in MLB) to the average fan. After buying teams for millions of dollars owners are using public funding and passing the costs off to already cash strapped civilians. The real owners of the teams aren’t the buyers instead they are the people of the city (Los Angeles). In this case Magic Johnson bought the Los Angeles Dodgers for 2 billion dollars however if you look at the details he is not the majority owner instead it is the Guggenheim partners. This chapter argues that owners are sitting on top of a financial sports bubble after fans have grown tired of owners feeding of public subsidies, sweetheart cable deals, and luxury box seats at the expense of the typical fan. It argues that sport use to bring community and family together but now all we see when we look at the stadium is a billion dollar leviathan that the average fan cant afford to enter into. The economic benefits of these public subsidised stadiums are now non existent only offering underpaid service jobs. Is it time to reconsider public funding in sport? And what are the repercussions of doing so? Player salaries would be a first to be lowered which would, and has, resulted in lockouts.

The average civilian should not have to pay for public subsidies to build new stadiums when most people won’t even be able to afford to walk in. Billionaire owners threaten cities to move if they don’t hand over money which has worked because cities do want teams since sport is popular and offers some benefits. Heading into the future it will be interesting to see how future stadiums are funded and if public money continues to be a major part. The economic insecurity of today’s society affects everyone from fans, athletes, and owners. The richest clearly being owners, to athletes, to fans. I believe that eventually public money will be weaved out of the stadium building process because this money can be used in more substantial areas such as health care or education while the owners of sport teams can find other ways of getting money instead of using public money. An alternative method would be using the Green Bay Packers method of being publically owned by die hard fans and creating a community connection. I believe that this alternative is the best way for teams to be owned and operated because it does not take money from the average civilian. Instead it connects all fans of the team while relying on the fans to help run the team. This is a most economically friendly and smartest way to run a team in my opinion and will possibly be the future of other sports franchises.