TL;DR - It is more complicated than "sports stadiums = bad" but these discussions rarely get deeper than that.
Additionally, the detractors often don't understand that these things are basically urban pacification projects. The argument has been made that having a place where the mayor sits down with a businessman on one side and a bricklayer on the other, where everybody has temporarily set aside their differences in politics, occupation, wealth, class, IQ, gender, religion, what-have-you and is lustily cheering for the same outcome, is good for social order.
To the extent that's true, it makes stadiums a valid subject for government funding. I don't like sportsball and I don't like being forced to pay for it, but I also can't see how to shoot any holes in this argument. It makes some sense.
You can always make up a story where your project brings intangible but wonderful benefits that no decent person could be against. This is normal.
If you can paint a rosy picture of community, or the happiness of children, or the safety of the vulnerable, it is indeed very hard to argue against. Saying the glowing vision is exaggerated or fabulated just makes you look like a grouch and a jerk.
In my town, the new stadium has a VIP area. Important people are specifically shielded from contact with bricklayers. Just saying.
Saying the glowing vision is exaggerated or fabulated just makes you look like a grouch and a jerk.
Yep. Unfortunately, the people who want to treat stadiums as public works projects have 2000+ years of history on their side going back to classical Rome and Athens. I've concluded that it's not a battle worth fighting, if only because my lack of appreciation of team sports makes me a bad judge of how important they are to society.
Massive "sports" events have been a staple of social control since Greek and Roman times, and still are to some extent. Instead of going out and killing people on the streets, you just watch gladiators kill one another.
People still riot from time to time when their favorite team loses a big match, but those riots can be much more easily controlled and condemned than one that actually exposes deep fissures within the society.
Having said that, however, it's worth asking whether a democratic society should allow the government to encourage such a well-known method of silencing dissent.
Additionally, the detractors often don't understand that these things are basically urban pacification projects. The argument has been made that having a place where the mayor sits down with a businessman on one side and a bricklayer on the other, where everybody has temporarily set aside their differences in politics, occupation, wealth, class, IQ, gender, religion, what-have-you and is lustily cheering for the same outcome, is good for social order.
To the extent that's true, it makes stadiums a valid subject for government funding. I don't like sportsball and I don't like being forced to pay for it, but I also can't see how to shoot any holes in this argument. It makes some sense.