“Mr. Tuohy opens the book with the folly of publicly financed stadiums—by far the strongest part of "The Fix Is In." Between 1990 and 2006 baseball teams opened 18 new stadiums at a combined cost of $5.6 billion, about $3.6 billion of which was supplied by taxpayers—although the profits are privately distributed, of course. New baseball stadiums for the Mets, Yankees and Twins in the past two years almost doubled the taxpayer contribution. As new taxpayer-financed stadiums have gone up, so have ticket prices: 103% in Detroit and 75% in San Francisco, by Mr. Tuohy's measure. The politicians who approve the funding for these stadiums hide behind the myth of "job creation." Yes, stadiums create jobs—at the cost of $705,000 per job in Phoenix and a staggering $2 million per job in Minneapolis. As sports economist Roger Noll has said: Opening a Macy's would have a greater effect on the New York economy than the new stadiums for the Giants and Jets. ”
