Top Sports Stadium Experts Question Viability of $400M Pawtucket Soccer Project
Thursday, April 23, 2020
While Rhode Island officials have extended the proposed $400 million soccer-retail and hotel project’s deadlines and Pawtucket officials continue to voice support for the project — two top experts on the business of sports question the financial viability of the project.
Fortuitous Partners, who announced the project in December, have recently hired multiple State House lobbyists and are pressing for tens of millions in public financing.
Vic Matheson, Professor of Economics at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester tells GoLocal, “It’s hard to believe a minor league soccer project is a priority for public funds now or in a couple of years."
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTMatheson, who is a self-identified soccer fanatic, said the coronavirus has done untold damage to minor-league soccer.
“This team could also be going back into a league that is weaker than the league it’s in now. This is a league with 100 teams and different tiers. Minor league sports are above everything the sort of thing to get crushed by coronavirus — everything they do is about getting people into the stadium. That’s not going to be happening with this team,” said Matheson.
“And this isn’t Lucchino — this isn’t John Henry, or Bob Kraft. These are often shoestring operations. [Coronavirus] could bankrupt a reasonably large number of teams in that league and suddenly this isn’t the league it was before,” added Matheson.
What will be the priorities
Neil deMause, the author of “Field of Schemes” and writer for VICE and the Village Voice, has been a vocal critic of public funding of stadiums.
“‘Financially viable’ as in will it repay its costs for the developers? Or for the public? Or is it a worthwhile use of public funds in a time when budgets are being slashed? They’re all slightly different questions,” said deMause.
“But in the broad scheme of things: There are untold reams of academic studies that prove pretty definitively that sports development projects create a tiny sliver of the economic impact their proponents claim,” he added.
“While the coronavirus crash shouldn’t make a huge difference in the long-term viability of a proposed project like Pawtucket’s — even if sports doesn’t return until 2022, that’s not hugely significant when you’re looking at 30-year impact — it does throw into sharp relief how important it is not to throw money recklessly at every ‘job-creating’ project that comes along, because that’s money you may need when hard times come along,” added deMause.
Matheson says, "There's no doubt every state and local government will face shortfalls from near to medium term, until we have a solution to COVID-19 — we will not get fully back to normal to cure or prevent people from getting COVID-19."
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