Wow. Someone else makes the link between the Dallas mega-stadium and the looming NFL lockout. WaPo scribe Sally Jenkins:
This Super Bowl was the future, and it set some lousy precedents. Every owner in the league wants a stadium like this one, and they will be pitching – maybe even extorting – their communities to help them build one. They want ever-larger luxury suites and bigger restaurants, and giant scoreboards and TVs, so they can replicate this Super Bowl, and sell standing room space in plazas and blocked views of a big screen for $200.
“Of the 100,000 and change tickets they sold, how many of those people actually had seats, and how many could actually see the field?” asks Neil deMause, a stadium-financing watchdog who co-authored the book, “Field of Schemes.” He adds: “That’s revolutionary if you can sell tickets to not actually watch the game. That’s a whole new ballgame. So obviously everybody is saying, ‘Hey, we want to get one of those.’ ”
It’s the shiny new toy in the league. New stadiums are such a priority for owners that it’s a critical piece of the labor negotiations taking place with the players’ union. A major reason owners resent the 60 percent cut of revenue that goes to players is because it’s not easy to finance stadium projects.
We’ve been screaming the same point for months, trying to explain that Jerry Richardson sees himself as the champion of the small market teams who cannot afford billion-dollar stadiums — not without public money that is just not going to be there for the foreseeable future. As such the lockout is as much about breaking the union and its spend-thrift members as it is giving NFL communities a scary preview of life without pro football. Don’t want that to become the future of Jax, Buffalo, Minnesota, Charlotte — better get ready to pony up billions for football palaces just as soon this all simmers down.
