Smith College Professor to Testify Before Senate Judiciary Committee on Public Funding for Professional Sports Stadiums

Andrew S. Zimbalist, Robert A. Woods Professor of Economics at Smith College, will testify before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee beginning at 2 p.m., Tuesday, June 15, regarding a bill before the senate sponsored by Senator Arlen Specter, R-Pa., that calls for Major League Baseball (MLB) and the National Football League (NFL) organizations to pay up to 50 percent of construction costs for new stadiums.

Zimbalist, the author, with Stanford University's Roger Noll, of "Sports, Jobs and Taxes: The Economic Impact of Sports Teams and Stadiums," has become a renowned expert on the business and economics of professional baseball, basketball and football since the 1992 publication of his book, "Baseball and Billions." He recently testified before the Connecticut state legislature regarding the state's failed proposal to move the New England Patriots to Hartford and in 1996 testified before the New York State legislature on a new stadium proposed for Manhattan's West Side. Zimbalist also served as a consultant to the National Basketball Association's players' union during negotiations last year with the league's owners.

Specter's proposed bill, which is co-sponsored by senators Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Joseph Biden, D-Delaware, would grant the NFL an antitrust exemption to control relocations of league franchises and continue a Major League Baseball antitrust exemption on the condition that each league place 10 percent of its television revenues into a trust fund that would finance up to 50 percent of the costs for their teams' stadium construction and renovations.

Zimbalist's testimony, while supportive of some type of legislation that would limit the amount of public financing used by professional sports teams in building arenas, will challenge the fine points of Specter's proposal.

"More needs to be done to bring sports industry welfare under control," says Zimbalist. "Senator Spector's effort is to be commended. The task now is to make appropriate refinements to the bill and to overcome the ever-so-effective lobbying efforts of the NFL and MLB by enlisting support for the measure among members of Congress from outside the few cities and states currently being extorted for large public stadium subsidies."

Zimbalist, who was named the 1998 Sports Journalist of the Year by New York's Village Voice, is currently writing a book on the economics of college sports.

June 11, 1999