Here in the land of the Packers and Badgers, it’s not often that we cast a sympathetic eye toward the land of 10,000 lakes. Now might be a good time to start, though, as the Minnesota Vikings seem to have taken a literal understanding of their mascot and are in the process of pillaging our neighbors to the northwest.
If you are a Vikings fan, you are by now well versed in the political battle that has been raging over the team’s plans for a new stadium for years. If you aren’t, here’s what it comes down to: The Vikings want a place to play, but they don’t want to pay for it.
The team is looking for a new home with upgraded facilities and a larger seating capacity, maybe even one with a roof that doesn’t collapse, or one that doesn’t look from a distance like a deflated zeppelin from the 1930s no one ever bothered to clean up. That new stadium, as you might imagine, will be a bit expensive to build—one recent plan would cost at least $900 million, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
But the Vikings would rather that bill was left to Minnesota’s taxpayers, through our most common collision of sports and extortion: public financing. Yes, the Vikings want a state that faced a multi-billion-dollar deficit last summer to subsidize their multi-billion-dollar industry.
Consider the deal Ramsey County, Minn., came up with a few weeks ago. To pay for a proposed $1.1 billion stadium, Ramsey County and the state of Minnesota would contribute $686 million in public financing, leaving the Vikings on the hook for $425 million. The team rejected that plan—it wasn’t sweet enough.
To convince Minnesotans they should cover the costs of their privately owned sports teams, the Vikings rolled out a slick ad campaign last fall. The two-minute video shows families of Vikings fans cheering on their team at home and in the stands, weaving in historic clips of the team and building to its pitch for a new stadium it says will boost Minneapolis’ image and bring jobs and revenue to the state. As the video ends with more images of passionate fans, the narrator says, “This is our team. This is our state. This is our home.”
But, Minnesota, here’s the thing: The Vikings don’t care about you, or your traditions, or your state or your “home.” They care about your tax dollars.
The team is exploiting a classic trick of sports franchises looking to steal a new stadium. They’re tugging at the heartstrings of fans, presenting themselves as the good guys who just want to stay here because they love you so much, but who might not be able to unless you give them a few hundred million dollars. If the team packs up and moves, then it’s not their fault, it’s those greedy politicians who wanted taxpayer money for more sinister purposes like “schools” and “fire departments.”
Throw in some verifiably bogus claims of a return on investment through jobs and economic activity around the stadium and the threat to lawmakers that they would run for office as The Guy Who Lost The Team, and you’ve got yourself a standard stadium mugging.
The Vikings aren’t the first team to use these shady tactics, nor will they be the last. For now, they’re just our most recent example of the absurd and shameful tactics sports franchises pull to make sure our tax dollars subsidize their industry.
By calling out the Vikings, I realize I’ve waded into that forbidden overlap in the Venn diagram of sports and politics. Discussions of public financing inevitably come down to the contentious and thorny issue that’s been forming a base for any number of national political arguments for years now: What do we want our government to do?
But no matter where you stand on the issues debated in our halls of power, here’s something that shouldn’t be controversial: I don’t want my government propping up franchises that pull down hundreds of millions of dollars each year.
These aren’t public works projects. They don’t serve a real common good. A new Vikings stadium won’t make Minnesota’s schools better, streets safer or air and water cleaner. It will, instead, continue the trend of sports teams holding cities hostage and demanding an increasingly massive ransom.
So, Badgers, let’s lend our support to Minnesotans and, strange as it may sound, Vikings fans. We want you to keep your team and your tradition – we just don’t want you to get robbed in the process.
Should governments finance new stadiums, or should that job be up to the teams? Tell Nico what you think at nicosavidge@gmail.com.
