\n<\/p>\n
I<\/span>n March, Manchester United officially unveiled images and plans for a new 100,000-seater stadium to replace their current aging home, Old Trafford. While the grandiosity of the circus-tent-like structure attracted widespread attention, something else did, too: as part of this project, United are planning to secure land not by paying for it themselves \u2013 but by having the UK government do it for them.<\/p>\n In order to clear the site that the club wants to use, a rail freight hub will need to be moved to out near St Helens, a town in between Manchester and Liverpool. The cost of moving the hub is estimated to be between \u00a3200m and 300m ($270-405m), but that may be an optimistic appraisal; in the past, the project budget was estimated at closer to a \u00a31bn ($1.35bn).<\/p>\n Politicians supporting United\u2019s plan, like Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham, have stressed that no public money will be used to build the stadium. But that appears to be a bit of verbal trickery: United\u2019s new stadium cannot be built as planned without moving the freight rail hub; if the government pays to move the hub, they save United from having to do so themselves. (Manchester United declined to respond to a request for comment.)<\/p>\n The plan\u2019s proponents back it by promising it would confer grand economic benefits to Greater Manchester \u2013 92,000 new jobs! 17,000 new homes! 1.8 million additional tourists! \u2013 and would be worth over \u00a37bn annually to the UK economy. Sebastian Coe, the chair of the Old Trafford Regeneration Taskforce and a key organizer behind the 2012 London Olympics, has said \u201cI don\u2019t think I\u2019m overstating when I say this actually has the potential to be, not only a bigger project than London 2012 but, in terms of European scope and scale, probably the biggest thing that\u2019s ever really been undertaken.\u201d<\/p>\n If United does secure hundreds of millions of pounds of public money as an ancillary part of its stadium project, the club, knowingly or otherwise, would be continuing a long and ignoble American tradition. In the UK, it\u2019s relatively rare for big sports teams to benefit from public money. In the US, however, it\u2019s such a common practice that the record for the largest public subsidy given to a team has been repeatedly shattered in recent years. The Las Vegas Raiders received $750m (\u00a3555m) in 2016. The Buffalo Bills got $850m (\u00a3629m) in 2022. The Washington Commanders are now in the process of landing over $1bn (\u00a3740m).<\/p>\n And all that has happened despite a consensus among American academics that massive injections of public money towards major stadium projects have not led to the widespread economic benefits they promised. \u201cThat\u2019s the story they tell to get the public money, but it\u2019s the big lie\u201d of the stadium funding debate, says Pat Garofalo of the American Economic Liberties Project, \u201cWe [in the US] export a lot of problematic things. And I really hope that we don\u2019t export that<\/em> big lie.\u201d<\/p>\n Adds Geoffrey Propheter, a professor at the University of Colorado-Denver: \u201cIn the US, my colleagues and I have the benefit of [decades] worth of examples. We have gotten to see how government intervention in sports facilities has evolved into this monster.\u201d According to Propheter, out of the approximately 125 major league sports facilities across five major leagues \u2013 MLB, NBA, NHL, NFL, and MLS \u2013 only about ten percent do not or have not received public money in some form.<\/p>\n In the UK, West Ham and Manchester City play in stadiums built with public money, but in both cases the facilities were built for mass one-off sporting events (the London Olympics and the 2002 Commonwealth Games, respectively) and then repurposed. According to research by the University of Michigan professor Stefan Szymanski, smaller clubs lower down the pyramid \u2013 like Swansea City and Colchester United \u2013 have received some public money, but that spending was seen more as an investment into a community asset like a library or a school rather than as an economic generator.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the US it is almost taken as a given now that any new facility will receive taxpayer funding,\u201d says Garofalo. \u201cIt\u2019s the ones that don\u2019t that stand out as oddballs.\u201d<\/p>\n The story that Manchester United is telling now is the same one that American sports owners have told, again and again, despite a voluminous and still-growing body of proof that the story isn\u2019t real.<\/p>\n \u201cI stress to my friends in the UK \u2013 all the evidence here shows that it\u2019s not true,\u201d Garofalo says. \u201cYou are setting this money on fire. And you are doing this to support a massive private business that prints<\/em> money.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>Hadlock Field, home to the Portland Sea Dogs, got renovated recent as the team received a $2m tax break. <\/span> Photograph: The Washington Post\/Getty Images<\/p>\n In 2024, the Portland Sea Dogs \u2013 a minor league baseball team in Portland, Maine \u2013 received a $2m tax break. While the sums of money and the size of the teams being discussed vary widely, there is a parallel between the Sea Dogs and Manchester United: both effectively disguised their solicitations for public money. Just like United isn\u2019t asking for hundreds of millions of pounds to go into their stadium construction budget, the Sea Dogs didn\u2019t ask for $2m to be put in their bank account. But by not having to pay $2m in taxes, that\u2019s effectively what the Sea Dogs got.<\/p>\n Maura Pillsbury of the Maine Center For Economic Policy was part of a network of locals and legislators who pushed back on the Sea Dogs\u2019 tax break, ultimately unsuccessfully. When imagining what she would share with folks in Manchester as they contemplated United\u2019s plan, she says, \u201cEverybody here loves the Sea Dogs and I\u2019m sure everybody there loves Manchester United\u201d (City fans aside, of course) \u201cso it\u2019s hard to say no to. But I would encourage them to think about what they\u2019re sacrificing. Other people are going to have to pay for that. Something is gonna get cut.\u201d<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Sign up to Soccer with Jonathan Wilson<\/span><\/p>\n Jonathan Wilson brings expert analysis on the biggest stories from European soccer<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n President Donald Trump recently signed into law a massive federal budget bill that will slash social programs across the US and directly impact vulnerable populations in Maine. Meanwhile, the Sea Dogs recently unveiled the results of the renovation paid for in part by their tax break. \u201cThat was another dagger,\u201d Pillsbury says. \u201cGiving the Sea Dogs $2m \u2013 that was a policy choice. Where could have this money gone instead? That\u2019s childcare subsidies, that\u2019s health care, that\u2019s food on kids\u2019 plates. The emotional, feelgood nature of these proposals belie the actual reality \u2013 there\u2019s a cost and a consequence to making these decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>The NFL\u2019s Raiders moved from Oakland to Las Vegas in 2020 after getting $750m of public money to build Allegiant Stadium. <\/span> Photograph: Ethan Miller\/Getty Images<\/p>\n Propheter says that to \u201cget to where we are now\u201d \u2013 where American pro teams are approaching the billion dollar mark in public money payouts \u2013 \u201cit took about 50 years of these stadium messes. I wonder if across the pond, folks are like, \u2018hey, we can get to where America is because we can learn from the NFL, MLB \u2013 we can get to ballooning subsidies even faster<\/em>.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n One thing standing in the way of this dangerous precedent blossoming in the UK may be the agency of the fans. As United seeks to benefit from public money, will fans \u2013 imagining where else their tax dollars could go \u2013 push back?<\/p>\n American fans \u201clive in a world of fear,\u201d says the University of Michigan\u2019s Stefan Syzmanski, \u201cbecause of what terrible thing might happen to them\u201d \u2013 namely, their team being taken away.<\/p>\n When a team owner in the US asks for public money, there is the implicit or explicit threat of the owner moving the team if the municipality doesn\u2019t cough up the dough. \u201cAs a matter of rote reflex,\u201d Garofalo says, \u201cthey threaten to move the team. They have all the leverage to demand these subsidies\u201d lest they have to rip up the team and move away. \u201cThe fans treat the team as a community asset and the owners treat it as a private business.\u201d<\/p>\n But while American sports fans seem to respect team owners\u2019 legal right to manipulate them by threatening to leave, in the UK, Szymanski says, the thinking is different. Relocating your team is \u201ca borderline criminal activity.\u201d And in general, fans don\u2019t think the owners of their teams should get to do whatever they want.<\/p>\n \u201cManchester United fans do not actually believe\u201d that its proprietors, the Glazer family and Jim Ratcliffe, \u201cown Manchester United,\u201d Szymanski says. \u201cThat might be the legal<\/em> position but the reality\u201d is that they, the club\u2019s supporters, are \u201cthe true owners\u201d and that the Glazers and Ratcliffe are \u201ctemporary stewards \u2013 and pretty shitty ones, at that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In March, Manchester United officially unveiled images and plans for a new 100,000-seater stadium to replace their current aging home, Old Trafford. While the grandiosity of the circus-tent-like structure attracted widespread attention, something else did, too: as part of this project, United are planning to secure land not by paying for it themselves \u2013 but<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16603,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[9919,1570,2062,177,9920,9921,6152,3677],"class_list":{"0":"post-16602","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-importing","9":"tag-manchester","10":"tag-money","11":"tag-public","12":"tag-sinister","13":"tag-stadiums","14":"tag-tactic","15":"tag-united"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16602"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16602\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}