public-financing - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Legislative Auditor Smacks Down Minnesota Sports Facilities Authority Over Luxury Suite Freebies<em></em>The Minnesota Legislative Auditor has released an extensive special report on the use of luxury suites at the publicly funded Minnesota Vikings stadium by commissioners of the Minnesota Sports Facilities Authority, finding that commissioners “violated a core ethical principle” when they gave free ti...

Let's Check In On Rio De Janeiro, Which Hosted The Olympics Five Months AgoEven before the 2016 Olympics kicked off in August, the state of Rio de Janeiro had declared a “state of public calamity in financial administration.” Five months later, things aren’t any better....

Government Officials Are Living It Up For Free At Publicly Funded Vikings StadiumThe five-person Minnesota Sports Facilities Authority was created to control and operate the Vikings’ new stadium on behalf of taxpayers, who coughed up half a billion dollars to build it. But it turns out that the MSFA members, along with other public officials, are being well taken care of by the ...

Stan Kroenke, Fresh Off Leaving St. Louis In The Lurch, Asks St. Louis For Tax Dollars

Stan Kroenke, a businessman who quite possibly wears the skinned pelt of a wombat atop his head on purpose, isn’t a popular man in St. Louis. He recently moved the Rams off to Los Angeles, drawing the ire of pretty much everyone there. So how should Stan go about mending his reputation there, seeing...

Claire McCaskill Might Actually Do Something About The Publicly-Financed Stadium Scam

Missouri senator Claire McCaskill says that she is drafting legislation that would require professional sports franchises that skip town prematurely to refund the public. St. Louis now has no NFL team, but incredibly, the city, county, and state still owe a combined $152 million to pay off the Edwar...

Raiders Owner Mark Davis Cheered By Fans He Wants To Abandon Or Steal From

The NFL held its third and final town hall meeting on relocation last night. After giving fans in San Diego and St. Louis a chance to vent and make a case for why their football teams shouldn’t be relocated to Los Angeles, a group of NFL execs trudged into the Paramount Theater in Oakland to hear it...

The Marlins Are Responsible For 40 Percent Of MLB's Attendance Drop

Today's Tom Verducci column in Sports Illustrated contains a very sad bit of information about everyone's favorite laughingstock of a franchise: the Miami Marlins....

Tom Coburn Wants To Revoke Sports Leagues' Tax-Exempt Charity Status

Last week Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma introduced an amendment to a bill called the Marketplace Fairness Act (the so-called "Internet tax") that would revoke the tax-exempt status of sports leagues. This is the news, and Think Progress has covered it nicely here. Also news, to most peop...