News Cut: November 13, 2007 Archive

What part of 'no' don't they get?

Posted at 12:34 PM on November 13, 2007 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)

All of it, apparently.

On Thursday, the Metropolitan Sports Facilities Commission will release a report on stadium financing that, it says, "details both the public costs and the revenues derived from supporting professional sports in Minnesota."

"This report shows that - contrary to what some people think - professional sports has been a financial winner for our state," said Roy Terwilliger, MSFC chairman. "The Metrodome has paid for itself through the revenues generated by its tenants and the tax revenues created by professional sports total up to hundreds of millions of dollar," the news release said.

Proving the Metrodome has "paid for itself" is not related to the question of taxpayer support for stadiums. Not anymore. The Metrodome is a dinosaur. The report may prove that it's smart business to build a public facility and then lease it out to a team, except that those days are over, because nobody builds stadiums with the Metrodome business model anymore. In fact, the Metrodome business model is exactly why teams want new stadiums.

The Twins wanted a new stadium because the money that goes to the Metropolitan Sports Facilities Commission, should -- they think -- go to the Twins instead. In other words, they don't want to rent. They want to own. Teams want stadium revenue, they want luxury box revenue, they want parking revenue, they want naming-rights revenue. They can't get that at the Metrodome, so they wanted out.

Clearly, it's now the Vikings who want a new stadium at taxpayer expense. But based on the news release, it looks like the report is going to mix up -- again -- the question of public financing of a new stadium with the question of whether it's good to have pro sports in a community. The report's release, comes in the middle of a "listening tour" the commisson is holding. In announcing that tour last month, Terwilliger said, "We need to move the discussion forward about whether we want to keep pro football in Minnesota..."

Well, no, the question is not whether to publicly fund a stadium or not have football. The question is whether to publicly fund a stadium for a private business or not publicly fund a stadium for a private business.

After more than 12 years of debate on the role of public subsidies for pro sports teams, it's pretty clear that , generally speaking, Minnesotans have been saying (a) yes, it's better to have a pro sports team than not have one and (b) no, it's not something worth spending tax money on.

Whether the discussion "moves forward" depends on whether the MSFC is listening.

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It's spam, but it's our spam

Posted at 2:22 PM on November 13, 2007 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)

I read somewhere last week that sooner or later, the United States is going to have to recognize it can't influence the rest of the world as easily anymore.

Japan, you got Okinawa back. Panama, we gave you the canal. But this Internet thing?
We're keeping it.

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What is a waste of time?

Posted at 7:24 PM on November 13, 2007 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)

Steve Olson pens an item forcing us to look at ourselves. And the time we waste... or not.

For the last month I have been trying to schedule two hours of unstructured play for my son and his best friend from school and we still haven’t found a time that works. The realization that we can’t find two hours for our 5-year-olds to play together without scheduling it several months in advance saddens me.

Which got me thinking… maybe all the time we spend trying to get everything done is the real waste of time, unless what we really enjoy is getting things done.

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This scalping thing

Posted at 7:27 PM on November 13, 2007 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)

I've wanted to do a piece for some time about the effects of the legalization of ticket scalping in Minnesota, but KSTP beat me to it a few weeks ago, when the Hannah Montana fans got worked up because all of the tickets to a concert were gone within minutes, but the scalpers had 'em.

Still, I had to do my own research. Last Saturday, tickets for Bruce Springsteen's March concert in St. Paul went on sale at 9 a.m.. I forgot about it until 11, but it turns out that tickets were still available, proving that Hannah Montana is bigger than Bruce Springsteen.

Ticketmaster, it appears, tried a few new things, limiting the number of tickets you could buy, and giving you only one minute to buy them. This didn't work out so well for me since in the process of buying them (a Christmas present for my wife), I had to go through the process of having Ticketmaster mail my account password to me, and then log back in, by which time the tickets were gone. And so were all the good seats. Take that, you scalpers!

Oh, and charging $95 for every ticket in the house (not including Ticketmaster's "hey, go sleep on the pavement if you want" $10.50 convenience charge) probably kept tickets available longer.

In the end, I ended up with a pair of seats of questionable pedigree. But I had seats.

A check of Ticket King -- the scalper that's now legal -- today showed that my seats are fetching as much as $300 each.

This law could destroy Christmas as we know it.

(Photo: Brad Barket/Getty Images)

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