Urban Power Structures and Publicly Financed Stadiums

Abstract

Urban elites are increasingly addressing local social problems though policies that turn their cities into tourist destinations. Often at the heart of these policies are new publicly financed sports stadiums. Ironically, this strategy is flourishing despite near‐unanimous academic criticism, and increasing public skepticism, about this approach. Our research addresses this contradiction by exploring how and why powerful decisionmakers continue supporting publicly financed stadiums. We rely on local growth coalition theory to explore this topic because it offers analytical advantages, including looking beyond local sports teams as the focal point of these initiatives, addressing the variation in the outcomes of these initiatives, and acknowledging that policymakers are predisposed toward supporting these initiatives but that this predisposition does not always result in success.