New BC Stadium Casts Doubt on All Professional Sports

In this era of billion-dollar sports facilities, a modern miracle has surfaced, comparable to the visit of the three spirits to Scrooge.

The BC Lions, who require a temporary place to play while their home field gets renovated, are able to build to a stadium seating 27,500 that can be erected in 10 weeks and costs a tidbit $14 million.

How good is this instant sports utopia?

Good enough to be accepted by both the Lions and the CFL.

Good enough to have a pleasing model and noteworthy article on display at the CFL's official website. That's more than the return of Ottawa to the league gets.

This is pleasing news to the CFL and the Lions because it gets them out of a tight spot at small cost.

If the CFL had any visionary leadership (doubtful), they would be parading this minimum-cost marvel to every rich investor who wants to start a new CFL franchise cheaply, and in every non-CFL Canadian city, especially Quebec, London, Kitchener, Victoria, Halifax, Oshawa, Windsor, and even to next year's one-shot CFL city, Moncton.

But the fact such suitable stadiums can be built so quickly and cheaply casts doubt and raises suspicious questions about professional sports and team owners though the entire world.

If you can detect a sense of hostility in the last sentence, you may wonder why Steve, who has been a member of Bleacher Report for over a year and loves writing about sports, who has followed the NFL, the CFL, the NHL, and sometimes MLB from his single digits, is breathing fire against professional sports.

After all, I've been an open supporter of Quebec building a new arena, CFL teams building bigger stadiums, expansion of the NHL to Canada, etc.

Actually the hostility dates back to the 1980s and stems from two events. The first is the building of Toronto's SkyDome.

Back when Toronto had only CNE stadium, which was ridiculed as "the mistake by the lake," newspapers, sportscasters, and sports fans lamented that Toronto needed a modern sports facility to make its sports dreams come true.

My mother and I, as city taxpayers, were in favor of putting our tax dollars to such a project.

The avowed goal of Toronto's sports dreamers was not only to provide a first class home for the Argonauts and Blue Jays, but also to be able to lure things like an NFL franchise and big international events like the Olympics.

So when things finally got in motion for building a new stadium at last, we were gung-ho for it. It would be a stadium big enough to get an NFL franchise (60,000-seat minimum set by the NFL) and worthy enough to attract attention from the IOC.

Domed? Let's do it. Retractable roof? That's space age—nothing's been built like that before. That will really put Toronto on the sports map. We even gave our seal of approval to extras like hotel suites.

There was a big gala when the stadium opened, and the media were expecting a record crowd for a sports facility in Canada. It was only on opening night that it was finally revealed that the stadium only seated around 50,000, including restaurants.

Still worse, as I was to discover later, there are certain sections in the upper deck where if you don't sit in the front row, you can't see the playing field at all and you have to wait to look on the Jumbotron to see what actually happened.

All this for a facility whose cost soared to over half a billion dollars.

Now when you build sports facilities, especially using taxpayers' dollars, you get one shot at it, so you better do it right. To accept a design for a stadium that was 10,000 under the NFL minimum when they knew they wanted a franchise and big international events like the Olympics was ludicrous.

The other event that soured me on certain aspects of sports was the Ontario Amateur Sports Banquet.

Since I worked in the Sports and Fitness Department for the Provincial Government, one of my jobs was to help set up the event, which I was allowed to attend as a reward for my duties.

When the Ontario athlete of the year was announced, the crowd of 1,200, including myself, rose to give the deserving athlete a standing ovation. For two consecutive years, that athlete was that phenomenal runner, Ben Johnson.

You remember Ben. How everybody was doting on him. How he was bringing worldwide fame to Canada and Ontario.

I remember the care in the arrangements being made to pick him and his family up by limousine to be driven to the banquet.

I remember how we stood up and cheered. How we wanted to rush home and tell our friends and families that we were in the same room as him. How he made a fool of us and our tax dollars.

So when I read about things like billion-dollar stadiums, luxury boxes, and cable/satellite TV deals, all catering to the rich, I remember those two events, and my dander gets up.

Let's return to the present.

Let's start by talking about another event close to home, the Pan Am Games, the international sports event that Toronto has always pined for and finally bagged.

One facility, just one facility in the whole package, a track and field stadium in Hamilton that seats 15,000, just more than half the size of the new BC stadium, is supposed to cost $150 million. The only upgrade is that it's supposed to be "permanent."

That's going to be paid from my tax dollars. Why does something that is half the size of a stadium in BC cost 10 times as much? What's the big difference between "temporary" and "permanent"?

Now let's shift eastward to the neighbouring province of Quebec. 80,000 fans in Quebec City signed a petition to get their beloved Nordiques back.

So the mayor has obliged. A media giant, Quebecor, wants to be the main investor. 

Then the mayor had serious talks with NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman, who hinted that Quebec might be able to become Canada's seventh NHL city instead of Jim Balsillie and Hamilton if it built a proper NHL size arena of 18,000—and spared no expense.

So the mayor has come up with a $400 million figure—and it's all going to be paid for by the different levels of Canadian government with taxpayers' money.

The Federal and Provincial levels will contribute $175 million each, and the municipal Quebec government will toss in $50 million. To kick things off, the city is spending nearly one third of the BC stadium cost, $4 million, on a feasibility study.

I want to see Quebec back in the NHL but guess what my response will be if they want some of my tax dollars for it? No way!

(Author's note:  Because I want this article to be read by everyone, including children, I'm not using the exact sentence I would use if the taxman came calling. You can probably guess my exact words.)

So how come a stadium only costs $14 million and an arena $400 million? Do you want me to stand up and applaud Ben Johnson all over again?

Speaking of the NHL, let's go to that franchise that's been a hot topic since the spring of 2009, the Phoenix Coyotes.

Now a big part of the reason for the Coyotes' troubles, and why they have never had a profit for even one year, is the cost of their arena and ruinous lease that has been created to finance it.

In light of the new BC stadium, it's worth asking why their arena cost so much. If the Coyotes leave Phoenix, the taxpayers there are really made to look like suckers.

But these kinds of unpleasant contemplations are not just limited to the NHL. Let's talk about the future and the NFL.

Out in Los Angeles, the potential builders of a new $1 billion stadium (supposedly all privately financed) have put a bounty on seven franchises: Buffalo, Jacksonville, Oakland, San Francisco, San Diego, St. Louis, and Minnesota.

They don't want to wait for NFL expansion but want to steal an established team.

This can be a double-whammy for the taxpayers.

First, all these taxpayers who had their money spent improving or building stadiums are going to lose their team after so much devotion when they put their money where their mouths were.

Second, these taxpayers may be asked to cough up more cash to build an ultra-modern sports stadium that caters to the rich or risk losing their team.

It may be goodbye to the Buffalo Billpayers, the San Diego Chargemores, the Oakland Raidtills, the San Francisco Suckers, the St. Louis Ripoffs, the Jacksonville Jackpots, and the Minnesota Chumps.

I'm sure anyone who reads this article can think of other situations where greedy owners walked out on loyal fans who supported them when a rich damsel in distress dropped her handkerchief.

Remember Oakland, Baltimore, Montreal, Seattle, St. Louis, Houston, Cleveland, and too many other cities to count?

Internationally, let's not forget the cost of entertaining IOC and other lesser sports organizations who want big, expensive sports facilities for their athletes, like the ones coming to Toronto and Vancouver.

As for that half-billion-dollar sports facility, the SkyDome, it was sold to Ted Rogers for $25 million. Quite a drop in status and value.

Nowadays, whenever a city goes after some big sports event like the Olympics, some annoying, obnoxious, punky, little social group, usually titled "Bread Not Circuses," rears its ugly head and urges people not to spend tax dollars on sports facilities, but on useless people like the one in the photo above.

Sadly, they are probably right.