Congress, Teams and Power Dynamics in Siting Sports Facilities

Local governments have substantial incentive to subsidize sports teams by helping to finance stadia. These subsidies become particularly controversial when team owners threaten to leave town as leverage to extract more financial support from the host city. Given that Congress has power over interstate commerce and anti-trust law, it could step in to protect cities and the teams’ fans from extortion. This chapter documents several legislative routes that Congress has taken to address such concerns, but find that these bills rarely make it far in the legislative process. Instead, congressional legislation on sports financing appears to be driven more by highly public labor disputes than team relocations. Members of Congress have more incentive to defer to team owners and city officials (who in most instances are allies and partners of the teams) rather than unorganized fans.