Hundreds of other studies and books by individuals such as long-time sports economists Arthur T. Johnson in Minor League Baseball and Economic Development, Mark Rosentraub in Major League Losers, Kenneth Shropshire in The Sports Franchise Game, and Roger Noll and Andrew Zimbalist in Sports, Jobs, and Taxes, reach the same conclusion public support of professional and minor league sports is a bad investment. In practically none of the cities these studies examined did new sports stadia lead to any significant new private investment or provide for any significant economic benefits to the local economy besides the jobs generated by the initial capital construction of the stadia. More importantly, the new stadia generally were not even profitable or self-financing. A second claim to support public investment in a stadium is that keeping a sports team is necessary to ensure that one remains a first-class city. The answer is obviously no.
Professional sports are only one small piece of what makes a city first-class.
Moreover, professional sports are also only a small part of the local entertainment puzzle with many consumers often transferring their consumption to other forms of entertainment, including amateur sports, if pro sports are not available. Similarly, sports are even a smaller piece of the local urban economic pie, such that its presence or absence is not significant in the face of other features in a thriving and diverse urban area. Instead, sports owners look to other corporateinterests to buy tickets, thereby making sports an aspect of a city's first-class status that is beyond the reach of most of its residents. Finally, advocates for publicly funded stadia say that such funding is necessary to maintain owner's profits. The issue here is not profitability, but the level or amount of profits the owners want.