There
are some hinky things going on down in Louisiana. And damn if the Saints fans,
the entire state of Louisiana, and in fact the entire nation, are footing the
bill for the Saints franchise. This is the part that particularly interested
me:
In 2001, then-Louisiana Gov. Mike
Foster negotiated on behalf of the state of Louisiana to pay the Saints $186.5
million in payments over 10 years. By 2009, those payments amounted to $23.5
million in cash per year for each of the final three years of the agreement.
And that's not all. Times Picayune writer Peter Finney explains:
In addition to those guarantees, the
Saints also received: A rent-free Superdome; game-day staffing paid by the
state; 100 percent of premium seating (box suites and club seats), 100 percent
of game-day parking, fixed panel advertising and video-board advertising and 50
percent of Superdome marketing fund.
The total value of the above amounts to
roughly $11 million per season, which does not include ticket sales,
sponsorships and broadcast fees controlled by the team.
At the time, the prevailing sentiment
was that it was cheaper to just pay the Saints to play in the Superdome than to
build the team a new stadium. The state has been giving the team subsidies since
Tom Benson and a group of 35 others bought the team for $70 million in 1985.
Benson has repeatedly threatened to move the team without ever-greater
subsidies.
… the public ended up paying for at
least $336 million in renovations to the Superdome anyway, according to stadium
expert Neil deMause. So the public paid to keep the team in town and for a
virtually new stadium. Just five years ago, following damage from Hurricane
Katrina, the state paid to refurbish the stadium. The costs of that project, which
(surprise, surprise) included extensive renovations to the luxury suites,
totaled at least $220 million. (At least $75 million of that came from FEMA,
but those funds could have been spent elsewhere in Louisiana.) A mere two years
later, in part of the agreement to keep the Saints in town through 2025, the
state agreed to pay for $85 million more in renovations.
The situation is so absurd that the
fact that the Saints are finally playing virtually rent-free under the new
lease agreement (as opposed to getting paid to play in the Superdome) seems
like a great deal for taxpayers.
If
I’m reading the article correctly, and given that the article (insert sarcasm)
seems to have a bit of a bias, fans see Coach Sean Payton as the victim, when
really the fans of the Saints are the victims. Well, I actually would take it
further: all Louisiana residents are victims, and as far as the FEMA money that
went to help restore the Superdome after Hurricane Katrina, all American
tax-payers are victims. Instead of calling for Coach Payton to be freed, the
fans should be calling for themselves, Louisiana tax-payers, and American
tax-payers to be freed.
How
interesting.
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