Sociological Forum, Vol. 22, No.

3, September 2007 ( 2007)

DOI: 10.1111/j.1573-7861.2007.00022.x

Urban Power Structures and

Publicly Financed Stadiums
Kevin J. Delaney1 and Rick Eckstein2

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 pub-
licly 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 vari-
ation in the outcomes of these initiatives, and acknowledging that policymak-
ers are predisposed toward supporting these initiatives but that this
predisposition does not always result in success.
KEY WORDS: growth coalitions; political; stadiums.

INTRODUCTION

Local and state governments in the United States have spent well over
$10 billion since the mid-1980s in subsidies to professional baseball and
football stadiums in dozens of mostly urban communities (Keating, 1999;
Zaretsky, 2001). The scope of these projects, and their degree of public
financing, is unprecedented in the history of professional sports. Ironically,
this public financing boom has coincided with an increase in popular resist-
ance to using tax dollars for new stadiums, and a burgeoning academic
1
Department of Sociology, Temple University, 713 Gladfelter Hall, 1115 West Berks Street,
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19122; e-mail: kdelaney@temple.edu.
2
Department of Sociology, Villanova University, Villanova, Pennsylvania 19085; e-mail:
rick.eckstein@villanova.edu.

331

0884-8971/06/0300-0031/0  2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

332 Delaney and Eckstein

literature challenging the economic wisdom of these policies. Despite

increasing intellectual skepticism and grass-roots opposition, many political
and economic elites continue championing the community benefits of pub-
licly subsidized professional sports stadiums, and their policies continue to
direct hundreds of millions of public dollars toward them. Our research
tries to explain how and why communities, especially urban communities,
continue to view publicly financed sports stadiums as a wise investment
despite evidence to the contrary. Public financing of sports stadiums, while
interesting in and of itself, also provides a useful window into understand-
ing the operation of urban power structures.

STUDYING PUBLICLY FINANCED STADIUMS

The vast majority of literature on the public financing of new profes-

sional sports stadiums centers on the outcomes of these policies, namely,
on whether or not these stadiums are a worthwhile social investment of
tax dollars (Baade, 1994; Carlino and Coulson, 2004; Coates and Humph-
reys, 2000; Danielson, 1997; Noll and Zimbalist, 1997; Quirk and Fort,
1992; Rosentraub, 1997). A few studies show some minor benefit to cities,
particularly if a city did not previously have a team (Delaney and
Eckstein, 2003a; Shropshire, 1995) and others suggest that a new stadium
can shift small amounts of spending from surrounding suburbs into the
city proper (Austrian and Rosentraub, 1997, 2002). Overall, however, aca-
demic studies almost unanimously conclude that the financial payoff from
public investment in professional sports stadiums does not justify the use
of scarce public dollars, particularly in the face of other pressing urban
needs. For cities with existing teams (the vast majority), new stadiums
provide a short honeymoon period of increased attendance but ultimately
very little net increase in consumer spending or government tax revenues
from this spending. Instead, new stadiums are a catalyst for substituting
one type of consumer spending with another. Research has demonstrated
that the cost per job created is generally much higher and the taxes much
lower from publicly financed stadiums than from other social investments
(Austrian and Rosentraub, 1997; Baade and Sanderson, 1997; Noll and
Zimbalist, 1997).
A smaller literature examines the political processes behind the fre-
quently contentious battles to build new publicly financed stadiums. This
research usually consists of single-case studies or volumes of collected case
studies, and thus does not provide a comparative framework for identify-
ing social patterns between and among cities (Blair and Swindell, 1997;
Cagan and deMause, 1998; Keating, 1996; Noll and Zimbalist, 1997).
Urban Power and Publicly Financed Stadiums 333

Because most research relies on single-case studies, it is not yet clear what
theoretical models can best explain why some cities build new subsidized
stadiums more readily than others.
Despite limitations in existing research on the political processes sur-
rounding new stadium initiatives, several ideas have been advanced, often
drawing from well-developed theories of urban politics. ‘‘Corporate wel-
fare theory’’ suggests that publicly financed stadiums result from the
strong and biased relationship between wealthy sports team owners and
local governments (Bandow, 2003; Bast, 1998; Cagan and deMause, 1998;
Whitson et al., 2000). Here, government financing of stadiums would be
no different than subsidizing other business interests.
Political economy theories of various sorts point to the pressures on
political leaders to redevelop downtown areas in a quest to retain or
attract corporations. Here, the acquisition or retention of professional
sports teams fits within larger urban redevelopment policies and strategies
that focus on downtown revitalization through highly visible projects and
corporate recruitment or retention. These theories tend to focus on exter-
nal pressures on local governments (McGovern, 1998; Peterson, 1981; Sav-
itch and Kantor, 2002; Savitch and Thomas, 1991). ‘‘Urban regime
theory,’’ for example, offers an explanation of policy decisions that direct
scarce public resources toward things like sports stadiums (Lauria, 1997;
Stoker, 1995). Rather than seeing ‘‘corporate welfare’’ as a given, though,
urban regime theory examines the conditions under which certain busines-
ses dominate policymakers. From this perspective, publicly financed stadi-
ums illustrate the episodic domination by powerful sports franchise
owners over political actors; a domination that usually results from apply-
ing ‘‘extraordinary’’ political pressure such as, but not limited to, threats
of franchise relocation (Euchner, 1993; Euchner and McGovern, 2003;
Savitch and Thomas, 1991).
We find all these approaches useful for understanding the battles over
publicly financed sports stadiums. They point to the pressures on urban
policymakers that result from de-industrialization and population decline
(Peterson, 1981, 1995); they highlight the role of political elites in decision
making (Euchner, 1993; Stone, 1989), and the role of local political culture
in urban redevelopment policies and outcomes (McGovern, 1998; Reichl,
1999). However, we believe that certain challenges remain to developing
an explanatory framework for why cities pursue public subsidies for stadi-
ums. The first concerns the focus of analysis. When examining stadium
initiatives, corporate welfare theory focuses on the power of the sports
teams (and their owners) to extort huge concessions from municipalities.
However, in our research, we have found that certain nonsports businesses
are perhaps even more central to the political battles behind stadium
334 Delaney and Eckstein

initiatives than are team owners. Indeed, sometimes the sports teams are
only marginally involved in the quest for new publicly subsidized stadiums.
A second issue relates to the outcomes of stadium financing battles.
Corporate welfare theory implies that puppet politicians provide ‘‘assist-
ance’’ to wealthy team owners. According to this perspective, team owners
get their way by using their monopoly power to pressure policymakers.
Conversely, urban regime theory sometimes suggests that there are few
predictable patterns in stadium initiative outcomes. In the more quasi-
pluralistic versions of these approaches, political actors are often por-
trayed as ‘‘neutral referees’’ not inherently biased toward the interests of
powerful businesses. However, our comparative empirical research is
inconsistent with both these assumptions. To be sure, there is variation in
the quantity and quality of public stadium financing, including instances
where public financing does not materialize at all. But even though power-
ful elites do not always get their way, or get as much as they may want,
they still get their way most of the time, even in the face of significant
grass-roots resistance. Additionally, we have found that municipalities
are not neutral referees in these stadium initiatives but are clearly
predisposed toward building publicly financed stadiums. As we will argue,
this has become the default policy, although it may not be the inevitable
policy.
We incorporate some of the insights of urban regime theory and its
focus on alliances and pair it with growth coalition theory, which helps us
see how narrow definitions of growth can serve to unite elites around a
contentious issue like publicly subsidizing new stadiums. Our conception
of a local growth coalition is an extension and refinement of Molotch’s
(1976) notion of a growth machine where certain elite actors and organi-
zations define and control urban economic growth (Jonas and Wilson,
1999; Logan et al., 1999; Mollenkopf, 1983). In studying the political
processes surrounding stadium subsidies, we define growth coalitions as
institutional and ideological alliances between and among headquartered
local corporations, local government, and the local mainstream media.
These coalitions articulate and influence social policies intended to stimu-
late economic growth within certain prescribed parameters. In stadium
battles, pro-subsidy local growth coalitions are often more corporate
dominated than is the case in more classical applications of the growth
machine thesis, as these coalitions are often spearheaded by the elite,
CEO-only business roundtables that are found in many cities.
Local growth coalitions are important because they usually have a
very different vision than the general population about ‘‘correct’’ econo-
mic growth and development. Growth coalitions often favor large, visible
projects that will attract new corporations to the city, tax policies that are
Urban Power and Publicly Financed Stadiums 335

favorable to corporate investment, and real estate policies that increase

exchange value (Logan and Molotch, 1987; Mollenkopf, 1983). They are
less interested in everyday neighborhood concerns like trash collection,
public safety, pollution, and local mass transit, although they may be con-
cerned with suburban commuter mass transit (Whitt, 1982).
Our version of local growth coalition theory directs attention away
from the exclusive focus on sports teams and toward other important and
more powerful business organizations. Unlike some forms of growth
machine theory, our version of growth coalition theory acknowledges
empirical variation in the processes and outcomes of stadium initiatives
while also maintaining that this variation is biased (but not absolute)
toward building publicly financed stadiums and serving the interests of
powerful social entities (Troutman, 2004). We use the term ‘‘growth coali-
tion’’ rather than ‘‘growth machine’’ because it suggests that these institu-
tional alliances are not monolithic, even though they are quite powerful.
Additionally, we believe that local growth coalition theory adds a
‘‘third dimension’’ of power to corporate welfare theory and urban regime
theory (Davies, 2002; Lukes, 1974). Corporate welfare theory, at least
when applied to stadium initiatives, takes a mostly first-dimensional view
of power by focusing on overt political machinations like voting, lobbying,
and interest groups. These are important venues, but do not tell the whole
story behind stadium battles. Urban regime theory adds a second dimen-
sion of power to this analysis by exploring the less visible world of ‘‘extra-
ordinary politics’’ where threats, promises, and deals are tendered outside
of easily observable arenas. However, power is often exercised long before
reaching any observable political arena and may be rooted in a culture’s
dominant ideology.
We contend that growth coalition theory is well equipped to examine
this third dimension of power where certain conceptions of economic
growth have become ideologically established as ‘‘normal’’ or ‘‘correct’’
even before noticeable social actors begin debating them. We also wish to
open up growth machine theory to the importance of local political
culture and believe that thinking of growth coalitions as variable in
strength and strategy allows for increased focus on issues of culture. For
example, we would argue that the dominant ideology in the United States
defines as ‘‘normal’’ a corporate-centered definition of economic growth
that focuses on large, visible projects rather than less spectacular, commu-
nity-centered projects. Those who oppose a growth coalition’s vision of
economic growth, and the embodiment of this vision in publicly financed
stadiums, must ‘‘un-convince’’ social elites in many cities that such a
vision is in a community’s best interest. From a growth coalition perspec-
tive, opponents of publicly financed stadiums must fight city hall, whereas
336 Delaney and Eckstein

proponents of publicly financed stadiums are already aligned with city

hall.

METHODS AND DATA

This article draws from an ongoing project that, in its first stage,
examined 14 stadium initiatives in nine separate U.S. cites and, in its
second stage, is exploring four more initiatives in four other cities (Dela-
ney and Eckstein, 2003b). In the first stage of the project, we interviewed
more than 70 key players in these cities’ stadium battles (both supporters
and opponents), completed a thorough review of the local press accounts
of these battles, analyzed economic reports on the stadiums where avail-
able, and collected polling and voting data on referenda (when applicable).
Additionally, we spent time in each city, touring actual or proposed
stadium districts, and held numerous casual conversations with individuals
living and working there.
In this article, we have chosen to focus on two of these nine original
cities: Cincinnati and Minneapolis ⁄ St. Paul. We chose these two because
despite some important similarities between the two cities, the differing
stadium initiatives exemplify the prowess of local growth coalition theory
to understand urban power structures and to illustrate how stadium bat-
tles reflect these structures. These cities are a perfect foil for one another
because they are similar in some respects, yet their stadium initiatives
unfolded, and ended, very differently.
Cincinnati and Minneapolis are both considered ‘‘small-to-medium
markets’’ in danger of losing sports teams to relocation. Both cities have
had modest population growth over the past 20 years, with the Twin
Cities area having a more robust growth rate than Cincinnati
(see Table I). In terms of team value, Forbes magazine ranks the Cincin-
nati Reds at 19 and the Minnesota Twins as 28 among 30 major league
teams. Most importantly, in both cities, fear of the teams moving if they
did not get new stadiums has often been present and teams have either
intimated—or directly threatened—to move if they did not receive new
stadiums (Blair and Swindell, 1997; Weiner, 2000).

Table I. SMSA ⁄ CMSA Population

SMSA ⁄ CMSA 1980 1990 2000 % Increase 1980–2000

Cincinnati 1,660,257 1,744,124 1,979,202 19.2

Minneapolis ⁄ St. Paul 2,137,133 2,464,124 2,968,806 39

Source: U.S. Census Bureau.

Urban Power and Publicly Financed Stadiums 337

Despite these similarities, however, there has been a stark difference

in outcomes, with Cincinnati gaining two new stadiums with very gener-
ous public contributions and the Twin Cities remaining with no new stadi-
ums to replace the dual-purpose Metrodome. More recently, there has
been some movement toward publicly financed stadiums for the Twins
and Vikings, but there is no political or corporate consensus driving these
policies, which face significant legal and political challenges.
We will argue that these different outcomes for Cincinnati and
Minneapolis were not caused by divergent attitudes toward government
handouts, as corporate welfare theory might suggest. Nor did these differ-
ent outcomes indicate one set of owners’ episodic ability to extort policy-
makers, as urban regime theory might suggest. We also do not believe
that the relative strength of opposition groups determined the differing
outcome. Rather, we will argue that the dissimilar stadium outcomes
reflect important differences in the structure and strategy of each city’s
local growth coalition, even though the systemic position of important
social actors in both cities was to favor building new publicly financed sta-
diums.

TWO NEW STADIUMS FOR CINCINNATI

In August 2000, the Cincinnati Bengals (football) played their first

game in the brand-new Paul Brown Stadium. Costing more than $400 mil-
lion, this stadium was financed almost completely by public money, in this
case by a sales tax increase in Hamilton County, Ohio, which includes
Cincinnati and its surrounding suburbs. The Cincinnati Reds (baseball)
began their 2003 season in their separate new facility, now called the
Great American Ballpark. This stadium cost about $350 million and will
be funded out of the same countywide sales tax, with a little less than
90% paid by the public. Taken together, these Cincinnati stadium deals
are the most generous toward the teams among the recent wave of pub-
licly financed stadiums (Delaney and Eckstein, 2003b).3
As in many other cities, these initiatives were accompanied by team
threats (especially by the Bengals) to find another home if they did not
receive new publicly financed stadiums. Also as in other cities, the two
teams had shared a facility for many years and had squabbled over who
was benefiting more from this arrangement. A 1994 lawsuit filed by the
Bengals claimed that the city was treating the Reds more kindly, in

3
The recent stadium agreement in Washington, DC should eclipse Cincinnati as the most
heavily subsidized baseball deal since 1993.
338 Delaney and Eckstein

violation of their lease that promised no favorites would be played.

Although the substantive merits of this claim were debatable, the lawsuit
was settled with the city giving the Bengals additional money and agreeing
to add more luxury boxes and club seating.
Both teams’ dissatisfaction continued, however, and as part of a
larger national trend, the Reds and the Bengals both asked for new single-
sport stadiums. In 1994, the city and the county put together a Regional
Stadium Task Force, which concluded that $544 million would be
required for riverfront projects, of which $185 million would go to a new
football stadium. However, the taskforce did not have a source for this
money. A few months later, a little-known county commissioner, who had
been appointed to this position after a vacancy arose, stepped forward
with a plan to raise sales taxes in the county by 0.5%, dedicating this
money to the proposed football stadium. In March 1996, this sales tax
was passed by a public vote, with 61% in favor. Eventually, the sales tax
was also used to fund a new baseball stadium.
So, at first glance, the story appears to be that the teams threatened to
leave, the public and their representatives recognized this possibility, and
voted for a tax increase that heaped tremendous public largesse on already
wealthy team owners. Such an explanation would be quite consistent with
both corporate welfare theory and urban regime theory. Although not
wrong, these explanations only scratch the surface of what unfolded in
Cincinnati. A more thorough inspection of this stadium initiative reveals
that this was much more than a local government giving handouts to
greedy team owners (corporate welfare) or powerful team owners using
their oligopolistic power in this instance to extort an otherwise neutral
municipality (urban regime theory). Instead, as we will argue, it was
Cincinnati’s extraordinarily influential local growth coalition, apart from
the team owners, that blazed the trail to these generous stadium agreements.

Cincinnati’s Local Growth Coalition

Although a combination of greedy and ⁄ or powerful team owners

along with a visible political official appeared to spearhead the stadium
initiative, our research suggests that this campaign was actually orchestra-
ted by Cincinnati’s powerful local growth coalition. Cincinnati has a very
strong corporate community, with six Fortune 500 companies headquar-
tered within the city, including three in the top 100. These companies, and
other large local corporations, are organized into a CEO-only group
called the Cincinnati Business Committee (CBC). The CBC started in
1977 and now consists of the 26 top CEOs in the area. In Cincinnati, the
Urban Power and Publicly Financed Stadiums 339

CBC has been very closely aligned with the local Chamber of Commerce.
This sort of alliance is not unheard of in other cities, but we discovered that
it was much more cohesive in Cincinnati than in any other city we studied.
Elsewhere, chambers are usually more concerned with helping all businesses
flourish by providing support and networking services, while the CEO-only
groups are more interested in larger public policy issues affecting major cor-
porations. In some cities, there was noticeable disagreement between the
CEO group and the chamber about the importance of new stadiums. But
not in Cincinnati. The structural integration between the two led to tight
cohesion on the stadium issue. According to a business community leader:
[The head of the chamber] sits on the CBC executive committee and the directors’
committee of Downtown Cincinnati, Inc. Their directors both sit on the Chamber
board. It is very incestuous … They work together on the issues, so you’re not
screwing around with who takes credit.

We believe this reflects both the extraordinary power and cohesion of

Cincinnati’s local growth coalition. Another executive believed that this
cohesion was due in part to the role played by locally headquartered
banks, as well as to a long history of corporate activism.
The bankers are obviously very important. It’s one of only a few communities
where three of the four largest banks are locally owned. Name another community
where that exists … Businesses are expected to give a lot philanthropically. If you
and your corporation don’t give of your time and treasure then you’re not a part
of this community.

The unity and support of the corporate community in Cincinnati for

raising the sales tax to fund new stadiums was absolutely essential to the
success of the campaign. Although a county commissioner was the visible
spokesperson for the coalition in favor of new stadiums, it was the corpor-
ate community that provided the strategic guiding force as well as the
funding in support of the referendum. As a corporate leader told us:
We had six business leaders each with their own ideas and who should be the
spokesperson. We spent the next six to eight months working with a consultant,
raising a million bucks so he had the resources to do what he needed to do. Then
being a sort of kitchen cabinet to advise.

Cincinnati’s local growth coalition wisely chose not to frame the sta-
dium initiative around economic development as had been done in other
cities. This argument has been largely discredited and often leads directly
to the charge of corporate welfare for team owners (Delaney and
Eckstein, 2003b). Instead, the coalition strategically framed the sales tax
campaign around the slogan, ‘‘Keep Cincinnati a Major League City.’’
This allowed coalition members to argue that an increased sales tax was
not about providing public money for wealthy sports team owners, but
340 Delaney and Eckstein

about retaining the vitality of Cincinnati and keeping it from falling into
the ranks of lesser U.S. cities. In this way, throughout the campaign for
an increased sales tax, the referendum was portrayed as a wise civic invest-
ment. As one coalition member put it:
Sports do not operate on a rational basis. I sat there … and thought, intellectu-
ally, it probably doesn’t pay in terms of dollars and cents. But that [pointing to a
banner reading, ‘‘Major League Future’’] was what kept it on my [radar] screen …
the mayor said it’s not about rich ballplayers and owners; it’s about Cincinnati,
about the community. Do you want Cincinnati or do you want Memphis? Do you
want Detroit?

Despite their important role in orchestrating the stadium funding,

corporate leaders in Cincinnati also realized that it was best for them
to stay out of the limelight. This was due, in large part, to the very
visible role corporate leaders had taken in a prior fight to revise the
city charter and replace the weak mayor system with a strong mayor
system more to the corporate community’s liking. The CBC, however,
had made the strategic error of being the major visible advocate of this
plan. Opponents to the charter revision eventually convinced the public
that this was an attempt by corporate leaders to ‘‘take over’’ the city.
The CBC was pilloried and the charter campaign went down to a deci-
sive defeat. The CBC learned a very important lesson from this experi-
ence. The business community knew it was wiser to have a politician
leading the charge for stadium funding, while keeping business leaders
in the background. As a coalition member central to the process com-
mented:
We had just prior to that, single handedly gone out and championed the strong
mayor form of government. It went down in absolute flames. It was a disaster …
when we decided to get involved [on the tax issue for the stadium] … until three
days before the actual vote, you never saw a suit.

Of course, the corporate leadership was there with financial support

for the referendum campaign. It helped raise over a million dollars to pro-
vide advertising in favor of the sales tax. The growth coalition, on the
advice of their consultant, also concluded that it needed the African-
American vote in order to win the sales tax referendum, particularly since
several unions had come out publicly against the referendum. Key busi-
ness leaders met with African-American clergy and pledged to try to get a
large percentage of African-American-owned firms in on the stadium con-
struction. As one referendum supporter told us:
[We convinced] them they were going to get jobs. Nothing guaranteed but a
commitment that there would hopefully be 15 percent of the total work done by
African American firms. We initially suggested 10 percent, then realized we
couldn’t get the deal done for less than 15 percent …. and we did it.
Urban Power and Publicly Financed Stadiums 341

After this meeting, African-American clergy publicly supported the ref-

erendum. Thus, growth coalition members intervened at key moments in
support of the tax referendum campaign, while simultaneously trying to keep
a low public profile. This smooth and strategic coordination of the business
community was absolutely crucial to the success of the sales tax campaign.

The Growth Coalition’s Media Component

Cincinnati’s local media was also an important part of the local growth
coalition’s drive toward publicly funded stadiums. As we found in several
other cities, Cincinnati’s electronic media was almost completely supportive
of the stadium initiative. The city’s dominant newspaper editorially champi-
oned the initiative, although its reporters often wrote stories that did not
cast referendum proponents in a positive light. Referendum opponents in
Cincinnati consistently told us that the local media was crucial in hammer-
ing home the message that new stadiums were necessary to keep Cincinnati
a major league city. There are actually two kinds of media bias at work here.
The first is overt pressure to control behavior. In Cincinnati, this took the
form of a radio station ‘‘reigning in’’ one of its on-air personalities to stop
him from being too skeptical about the referendum. In this case, the overt
display of power was successful and the pertinent media criticism of the ref-
erendum was toned down. As media outlets in Cincinnati and elsewhere
become increasingly corporatized, it becomes more difficult for views inde-
pendent of the dominant view of the growth coalition to be heard.
The other form of media bias is much more subtle and reflects an
almost a priori ideological convergence between the media and the rest of
the growth coalition. This convergence revolves around the ‘‘proper’’
vision of local economic growth and the role new stadiums play in that
vision. This convergence goes beyond the fact that local media have
become corporatized. Editors and reporters, especially in the electronic
media, seem predisposed to believe in the wonders of stadium-centered
economic development. The practice of uncritically reproducing press
releases from stadium advocates and covering the ‘‘dog and pony’’ shows,
such as ground-breaking ceremonies, help produce this bias and dissemin-
ate it throughout the community.

Opposition Groups and a Stroke of Luck

The political opposition to stadium funding in Cincinnati was a relat-

ively ‘‘ragtag’’ bunch of interests, including fiscal conservatives (of every
342 Delaney and Eckstein

possible affiliation) against increased public spending, some local unions,

and a minority of the city council. They were confronted by the well-oiled
and well-funded local growth coalition that included the cohesive corpor-
ate community, the mayor, a majority of the city council, a majority of
the Hamilton County Commissioners, and most of the local media. The
opposition’s first strategy was to stop the immediate implementation of a
tax increase without any public referendum. To force a referendum, oppo-
nents had to gather about 26,000 valid signatures from Hamilton County
residents and, given timing issues, they had to do this in 30 days.
An opposition leader told us about their efforts.
This was never done before so nobody knew how to do it …. We thought it was
impossible. It was August; terrible heat and rain … Our volunteers would go stand
in front of Kroger’s [supermarket] while Kroger is pro-tax. They would chase the
volunteers away. It was hit and run … We ended up with 90,000 signatures. That’s
a hell of an effort in a 30-day period … It didn’t take much to bring people in. At
one location in my neighborhood, we used a schoolyard and had four tables set
up. It was like a drive-in; they wouldn’t even have to get out of their cars. We had
cars lined up.

After their successful petition drive forced a March 1996 referendum,

it was time to discuss the initiative’s substance. On one side was this
decentralized group of individuals and organizations (held together some-
what by the local labor council). On the other side was Cincinnati’s for-
midable local growth coalition. Although specific numbers vary, we have
estimated that the referendum proponents outspent the opponents by
about a 15:1 margin in the referendum campaign. Yet despite this huge
imbalance of resources, and the one-sided presentations of the local elec-
tronic media, the referendum was facing defeat according to polls taken
just a few weeks before the vote.
However, at that very moment, the Cleveland Browns announced
they were leaving Ohio for Baltimore where a new publicly financed
stadium awaited them. The impact of this relocation reverberated straight
down I-71 to Cincinnati. It made more plausible the idea that Cincinnati’s
teams might leave town if the public did not cough up money for two
new stadiums. If people previously thought the Bengals would never leave
town, the Browns’ move made them think again. Although the local
growth coalition had nothing to do with the departure of the Browns
from Cleveland, it took quick advantage of the situation by suggesting
that what happened in Cleveland could surely happen in Cincinnati.
Suddenly, its cries of ‘‘Keep Cincinnati a Major League City’’ seemed very
real. As referendum proponents hit the airwaves with a massive last-min-
ute campaign, the solid vote against the referendum turned into a solid
vote supporting the referendum. On Election Day, every single ward in
Urban Power and Publicly Financed Stadiums 343

the county supported the referendum. Cincinnati would have its two new
stadiums, paid for almost entirely with public money.

NO NEW STADIUMS FOR MINNEAPOLIS

You might expect Minneapolis to have a similar stadium initiative

history as Cincinnati and, in some respects, there have been many paral-
lels. The Vikings and the Twins have both made it very clear that they
desire new stadiums to replace the dual purpose Metrodome. In fact, there
actually have been more efforts to build new stadiums in Minneapolis
(especially for the Twins) than in Cincinnati. These efforts have suggested
a wide variety of funding methods and schemes, including using cigarette
taxes, special lotteries, liquidating some of the teams’ assets, building
casinos, and building in adjacent St. Paul. All failed. Even a nonbinding
referendum on the basic ‘‘idea’’ of a new stadium did not bear fruit
(Delaney and Eckstein, 2003b; Weiner, 2000). In 2006, there was some
movement toward new publicly financed stadiums when the state House
and Senate narrowly passed separate bills generally related to future
construction and funding. However, the separate bills have enormous
differences that may or may not be resolved in a conference committee.
More importantly, several local municipalities have resisted concerted
efforts to raise taxes for stadium financing without a popular referendum,
although a few towns and counties seem quite willing to bypass electoral
input. So, while there has been some movement toward new stadiums in
Minnesota, this movement is still shockingly slow when compared to
Cincinnati’s stadium initiative.
Popular explanations for this scenario are not convincing. Corporate
welfare theory, at least as it has been applied to stadium initiatives, cannot
explain why the Minneapolis or Minnesota governments have not manipu-
lated or circumvented popular sentiment (as in other cities) and given
public money to rich team owners anyway.4 Urban regime theory is more
useful here and would suggest that specific circumstances have allowed the
local government to resist the powerful team owners despite their extortive
threats of franchise relocation. But while this is descriptively accurate, it
does not really tell us what the differing circumstances are, and why they
are different in Minneapolis. There have been some attempts to attribute
these differences to Minnesota’s unique brand of ‘‘political populism.’’
However, as we will explore in our pending discussion, this argument is
4
In Phoenix, Pittsburgh, and Milwaukee, political elites did circumvent popular sentiment
(as expressed in referenda) and provide public financing for new stadiums despite negative
votes.
344 Delaney and Eckstein

not particularly compelling in light of the evidence in Minnesota, or in the

larger context of other cases we have studied.
Growth coalition theory, in contrast, encourages us to explain these
outcome differences by focusing on the different processes informing each
city’s stadium initiative. More specifically, we will argue that the primary
difference between Minneapolis and Cincinnati is the efficacy of each
city’s local growth coalition. As we have shown, Cincinnati has a cohesive
and increasingly powerful local growth coalition that was capable of
neutralizing the very persistent opposition to publicly financed stadiums.
Minneapolis, however, has a severely fractured local growth coalition with
neither the strategy nor the power to brush aside the usual set of nay-say-
ers and secure public financing for new sports stadiums.

A Growth Coalition in Decline

Ironically, Minneapolis’ once powerful local growth coalition was

largely responsible for building the existing Metrodome in the late 1970s
(Delaney and Eckstein, 2003b; Weiner, 2000). However, it is the very
deterioration of this coalition in the 1980s and 1990s that has left it
largely ineffectual in the more recent stadium initiatives. The once
powerful Minneapolis growth coalition had been anchored by business
executives in some of the large, family-owned local corporations, including
Pillsbury and Dayton, as well as being supported by the former publisher
of the newspaper, John Cowles, Jr. This earlier generation of civic leaders
in Minneapolis had either died or sold off their businesses to larger
corporations headquartered elsewhere. Those corporations that remain
headquartered in town are now run by hired managers who did not grow
up or spend much time in Minneapolis. Thus, the business leadership in
Minneapolis had not made the long-term civic and political connections
necessary to hold together the growth coalition’s institutional alliances
under pressure. One long-time Minneapolis journalist noted:
A major player in the seventies that was missing in the 1990s was the business
community. In the run-up to the Dome’s political passage and financial creation, a
cabal of Minneapolis’ major business leaders determined that they would bring the
Dome downtown by hook or by crook. They didn’t jump in at the very beginning.
… But when the business leaders decided to get involved, their involvement was
deep and unswerving. They seriously put their money where their mouths were
(Weiner, 2000:76).

One particular recent episode illustrates this decline in the growth

coalition’s power. After several highly visible and unsuccessful efforts in
the 1990s by the Twins’ owner and the governor to gain a subsidy
Urban Power and Publicly Financed Stadiums 345

bill, two potential growth coalition leaders tried to create support in a

way similar to coalition leaders in Cincinnati. The publisher of the Minne-
apolis Star-Tribune, John Schueler, joined forces with the CEO of Norwest
Bank, Jim Campbell, in an effort to gain a new baseball stadium.
Mr. Schueler explained:
Jim Campbell and I … were asking, ‘‘Who is looking out for the region as a
whole? Who is taking a broad view of the community?’’… So we met with dozens
of people, just informal breakfasts and lunches. And we walked away perplexed
that there was not a lot of thinking not just about narrow view of economic devel-
opment but a broad view of infrastructural and component parts that are neces-
sary to make a thriving community.

These informal discussions included the Mayor of Minneapolis, indi-

viduals from the planning commission, CEOs of several major corpora-
tions, and city and county leaders. Schueler and Campbell made the
conscious decision to exclude the team owners—who they felt had become
a liability to making progress toward a new stadium. As Schueler put it
when asked if there was any involvement of the Twins:
Zero! Nada! They were the biggest part of the problem we felt … We asked the
politicians under what circumstances would they be able to go forward with a plan
for keeping Major League baseball in town. Who has to be involved in the process
and who needs to be outside the process?

Much like in Cincinnati, growth coalition members were learning that

to successfully gain a stadium, they needed to frame the stadium as an
amenity to keep Minneapolis a first-class city. This strategy would under-
cut charges of corporate welfare for wealthy team owners that had long
plagued stadium plans in the Twin Cities, especially when the team owners
were their most visible champions. However, unlike in Cincinnati,
Minneapolis could not hold the coalition together. One particularly
interesting illustration of this was when reporters at the Star-Tribune
protested vehemently against their publisher’s involvement in the stadium
initiative. In direct contrast to Cincinnati, where a similar objection by
reporters was rebuffed, the Minneapolis publisher backed down.
The experience of publisher John Schueler is simply one example of
this larger phenomenon. Unlike former publisher John Cowles who had
longstanding ties in Minneapolis, Schueler’s employer, the McClatchey
group, brought him into Minneapolis to head the local paper, which is
now part of a much larger newspaper chain. Schueler had previously spent
time in the newspaper business in California and in Florida but was still
new to the Twin Cities. He was trying to fill the role once played by
Cowles, the long-time publisher of the Tribune, as the coordinator of the
growth coalition. But, as Schueler admitted:
346 Delaney and Eckstein

Most of us are [now] hired guns. We don’t own these companies and therefore, many
people were thinking about their businesses overseas and the global economy was
forcing them to spend an inordinate amount of time out of this community … the
people that had made things happen in the community were family-owned businesses
and very wealthy entrepreneurs and [the] families had been here for a very long time
… and we felt we were losing that kind of a coalition.

In fact, many of the advocates of subsidizing new stadiums in the

Twin Cities we interviewed lamented the loss of the movers and shakers
who had made large projects happen in the city. A Minnesota baseball
executive talked of how the move to less local, corporate managers makes
it much harder for a coalition to form around stadium funding.
Compare [today] to when the Dome was done twenty years ago …. there was a
downtown group of businessmen, maybe eight or nine guys who bought the land
for this building [the Metrodome] …. they sold all the bonds to … three banks
and an insurance company on a Sunday afternoon. They bought ’em all … they
just got together and said, ‘‘We’ll buy them.’’ They didn’t have to go back and
ask their board; they just did it.

Unlike Cincinnati, Minneapolis does not have its own CEO-only

group, and thus it does not have a structure in place to unite the largest
corporations in the city. There is a statewide CEO group called Minnesota
Business Partnership. However, this ‘‘big chamber’’ is composed of about
100 CEOs from across the state, not just the city. When we interviewed
the Director of Minnesota Business Partnership, he estimated that about
one-third of the CEOs were in support of helping the teams get new stadi-
ums through public subsidies, about one-third were opposed, and one-
third simply indifferent. Unlike the CBC in Cincinnati, the Minnesota
Business Partnership has not placed new stadiums at the top of its agenda,
instead focusing on fiscal policies, kindergarten through 12th grade educa-
tion reform, and healthcare as its key issues. Contributing to the fractur-
ing of the growth coalition in Minneapolis is the fact that several large
family-run businesses, like Pillsbury, have been sold off, and others, like
Honeywell, moved their headquarters elsewhere. The executive director of
a business group that we interviewed drew a direct contrast with the active
growth coalition in the late 1970s and argued that a new breed of ‘‘global
CEO’’ made it more difficult to gain support for stadium subsidies.
You can use the analogy of the Metrodome, which is maybe 15–20 years old. The
corporate community was really engaged in that. The difference today is that we
have a different type of CEO. Their corporate involvement is still here, but they
have a much sharper focus … That coupled with the change in CEOs … More
and more are not from Minnesota.

Another potential coalition leader echoed this sentiment, arguing that

very few CEOs in Minneapolis wished to get involved in a campaign to
garner public financing. As he put it:
Urban Power and Publicly Financed Stadiums 347

We will probably stay out of it … Our CEOs say, ‘‘Keep your focus.’’ They say,
when it is on our screen, maybe there is something we can do about it, but they
haven’t put it on our screen. Absent [Governor] Carlson, who had feelings for it,
there is not a real strong leader, a lightning rod who wants to do it and says,
‘‘I am going to travel around the state and get this.’’

Because the CEOs were divided in the Minnesota Business Partner-

ship, the organization did not take an active role in stadium initiatives as
the CBC did in Cincinnati. Without the corporate community’s involve-
ment, leadership on the stadium issue has fallen to team owners and poli-
ticians, making charges of corporate welfare more tenable and more
resonant. Unlike Cincinnati, there has been no strong corporate presence
to reorient the subsidy campaign around issues of civic duty and civic
pride or to intervene at key moments when the initiative runs aground.

WHY GROWTH COALITIONS FAVOR STADIUMS

There are a number of reasons why local growth coalitions, especially

their corporate component, become involved in new stadium initiatives.
One reason is that some coalition members are sports fans and enjoy
rubbing elbows with team owners and athletes. However, this is only a
small part of the picture. More importantly, many CEOs see new stadiums
as important recruiting tools for top executives. They wish to portray their
city as one that is exciting and ‘‘on the move,’’ and they see sports stadi-
ums, with their luxury boxes and club seating, as one amenity to show off
to new recruits. Throughout our research in nine cities, we heard this
sentiment expressed over and over again. A typical version of this comes
from a local growth coalition member in Cincinnati.
What’s the greatest single problem a business has today? Workforce. If you inter-
view 50 businesses at random I’ll bet 49 would say that my biggest problem is get-
ting qualified workers. To get workers you have to get people who want to be in
your community because they love the community, it’s got things to offer. As the
incoming CEO of [one company] said, I got 80 people making over $100,000 in
this operation. Every one of them is young, aggressive, highly compensated people.
They don’t all just love the arts or the theater. They go to the best schools in the
country, they can go anywhere they want, they are the A players in the business
world. I need things that ‘‘A’’ players want and you’ve got it here.5

CEOs in both Minneapolis and Cincinnati agreed with the idea that
stadiums can be used for executive recruitment, but the executives in
Cincinnati have stronger and longer-lasting roots in the city, are more
organized through the CBC, and have more sway over public policy
5
When talking about recruiting ‘‘A’’ players, this interviewee appeared to be referring to
male executives.
348 Delaney and Eckstein

compared to those in Minneapolis. In other words, the strength and unity

of the growth coalition in Cincinnati more easily outmaneuvers opposition
than the weak and fractured coalition in Minneapolis. Political leaders in
cities with very strong corporate communities often feel pressure from cor-
porate interests that want new stadiums for executive recruitment and to
polish the image of their city.
It is more than just corporate pressure, however. Some political lead-
ers are also likely to support public funding because they feel increasing
pressure to stem population declines in their city, and a declining tax base.
In the past several decades, this has led many city leaders to pursue a
‘‘tourist’’ strategy to attract new dollars to their cities (Gottdiener, 2001;
Hannigan, 1998; Hoffman et al., 2003; Judd, 2003; Judd and Fainstein,
1999). Here, cities that are in danger of becoming ‘‘second-class cities’’ are
more vulnerable to the pressure to subsidize stadiums. Cleveland is a
prime example of this tourist strategy (Keating, 1996). The ‘‘city as tourist
attraction’’ entails trying to change the image of a declining city into one
of a tourist destination. This can be seen not only in the building of sports
stadiums, but also in investment in convention centers and the hotel and
entertainment industries. The problem with stadiums, however, is they are
only active for about 85 days (baseball) or 10 days (football), and only
for a few hours on each of these days. A more general problem with the
tourism strategy is that it depends on highly volatile and uncontrollable
factors such as the weather, economic vicissitudes, and political realities
that might temper people’s willingness to travel. It also does not help that
a tourism-based economy tends to create mostly low-wage and part-time
jobs with few benefits (Delaney and Eckstein, 2003b).
As mentioned previously, the difference in stadium outcomes in
Cincinnati and Minneapolis is sometimes explained by the contrasting
political climates of each city and their surrounding counties and states.
To some extent, this is true, at least descriptively. Cincinnati is clearly
more conservative and Republican than is Minneapolis. More import-
antly, perhaps, Cincinnati sits within an extremely Republican Hamilton
County and an increasingly Republican Ohio. Minneapolis, on the other
hand, has a long liberal tradition rooted in the progressive, Democratic
Farm Labor (DFL) party.
We remain unconvinced, however, that political party affiliation or
the traditional ‘‘liberal’’ and ‘‘conservative’’ labels hold any direct or read-
ily discernable meaning in publicly financed stadium initiatives. On the
one hand, one might expect Republicans to oppose the use of public
money to build stadiums based on the philosophy of limited government
and laissez-faire economics. According to this perspective, Democrats
might support large urban public work projects like stadiums because of
Urban Power and Publicly Financed Stadiums 349

the jobs they provide to potential voters and because of their less antagon-
istic attitude toward using tax revenues for large public projects. On the
other hand, new stadiums may be more desired by corporate elites who
are more likely to be Republican, while Democrats might see granting tax
money to team owners as a type of ‘‘corporate welfare’’ and thus oppose
stadium funding. In short, there is no obvious alignment of party interests
with support or opposition for stadium funding.
Indeed, in our larger project covering nine cities, and our continuing
investigation of four other cities, we have found no discernible pattern
between political party and support or opposition for public funding for
stadiums, particularly when it comes to elected officials. In Pittsburgh,
for example, Democratic local officials pushed hard and relentlessly for
stadium funding, while in Cincinnati it was a self-avowed, tax-cutting,
small government, Reagan Republican who politically championed a tax
increase to finance two new stadiums. In Minneapolis, Governor Arne
Carlson, a Democrat, played the leading role in trying to obtain state-level
stadium funding, and Governor Ventura (who is probably best described
as a libertarian) later opposed such funding. The recent stadium-related
votes in the Minnesota Legislature were completely nonpartisan among
Republicans, DFLs, and Independents. Transcripts from the legislative
debates demonstrated clearly that politicians’ views on publicly financed
stadiums were largely independent of their political affiliations. In
Washington, DC, political affiliation and philosophy explained none of the
city council’s temporary fragmentation over local plans for a new publicly
financed baseball stadium.
We also remain unconvinced that grass-roots opposition has very
much to do with slowing down stadium initiatives in Minneapolis or most
other cities. In fact, there has been very little organized opposition in the
Twin Cities. This has less to do with the civic spirit of people in
Minnesota and more to do with the particular dynamics of the local sta-
dium battle. In our larger research project, we have found that grass-roots
opposition only emerges during a referendum campaign, as this first-
dimensional political process provides a catalyst for community action.
This is why so many stadium proponents, including those in Minnesota,
want desperately to bypass public referenda. Much of the current contro-
versy over the Vikings’ stadium concerns whether or not the residents of
suburban Blaine County will be allowed to vote on any tax increase to
finance the stadium.
We have also found that the emergence of grass-roots opposition and
the influence of this opposition have only a tenuous relationship to the
final outcomes of stadium initiatives. In Pittsburgh and Phoenix, for
example, new stadiums were built (with generous public financing) even
350 Delaney and Eckstein

though voters rejected these plans at the ballot box. Philadelphia, in con-
trast, had no public referendum (thus, no organized opposition), yet its
eventual stadium financing was far less generous to the teams. Although
we would never conclude that grass-roots opposition is a waste of time,
the empirical data strongly suggest that it matters very little when it comes
to stadium initiative outcomes (Delaney and Eckstein, 2003a). Far more
important is the relative cohesion of and strategic choices made by polit-
ical, corporate, and media elites.

CONCLUSION

Growth coalition theory offers a useful avenue for understanding the

relationship between urban power structures and publicly financed sports
stadiums. By acknowledging the tremendous variation in the outcomes of
these initiatives, it bypasses the more deterministic explanation of corpor-
ate welfare or of omnipotent growth machines that imply that publicly
financed stadiums are the inevitable result of governments providing
subsidies to rich team owners. However, unlike more pluralistic approa-
ches, the growth coalition approach acknowledges that corporate-domin-
ated local growth coalitions play often decisive roles. Governments are
predisposed to support publicly financed stadiums despite public opposi-
tion, and fail to do so only when the local growth coalition is weak or
ineffective.
Growth coalition theory also helps us move away from concentrating
on the sports teams as the locus of power in stadium initiatives. Instead,
we have found that nonsports corporations, in alignment with local gov-
ernment and the local media, are more critical to the success of publicly
financed stadium battles. When the teams themselves have to pick up the
slack from a weak or ineffective growth coalition, the resulting initiatives
are less likely to overcome popular and academic opposition or to satisfy
new stadium proponents (Delaney and Eckstein, 2003a,b).
In sum, we believe the best way to explain the different processes and
outcomes of publicly financed stadium initiatives is to focus on the struc-
ture and strategies of a city’s local growth coalition. In our larger investi-
gation of nine U.S. cities (Delaney and Eckstein, 2003b), cities with strong
coalitions, like Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland, that clearly articu-
late a corporate-centric vision of economic growth, and clearly connect
new stadiums with that vision, are most successful in building new stadi-
ums with relatively large amounts of public funding. Cities with weak or
deteriorating coalitions, like Minneapolis, Philadelphia, and Hartford,
where the corporate-centric vision of growth is not completely embedded
Urban Power and Publicly Financed Stadiums 351

in the dominant ideology, will be unsuccessful in building new stadiums

or will build new stadiums with relatively smaller amounts of public fund-
ing. Cities with strong growth coalitions are better able to suppress or cir-
cumvent local residents’ concerns with everyday issues such as better
schools, better mass transportation, sanitation pickup, municipal services,
recreation (i.e., neighborhood fields and parks), and public safety while
funding sports stadiums. Cities with weak coalitions are less able to deflect
these less spectacular concerns in favor of more visible monuments of
urban development. It is not necessarily that policymakers in strong coali-
tion cities do not care about more quality-of-life, neighborhood issues;
they just seem more likely to believe that community needs will be
addressed most adequately when the social benefits of new publicly
financed stadiums ‘‘trickle down’’ to the neighborhoods. The fact that this
rarely happens seems less important to the local growth coalitions that
influence urban policy. Amazingly, it is becoming more common for
urban policymakers to start a new round of publicly financed stadium
initiatives even before the last stadium’s costs have been paid.

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