Sunday, June 01, 2008
Sports
Hometown teams to the rescue
A modest proposal to fix Atlanta’s budget deficit
Scott Cunningham/Getty Images
Atlanta sports fans pack Philips Arena for Game 6 between the Boston Celtics and Atlanta Hawks during the first round of the NBA playoffs on May 2. By Chris Renaldo
The bad news is, the City of Atlanta has misplaced $140 million. The good news is, Atlanta City Councilman Jim Maddox has an idea: a $1 “entertainment” tax to be added to the cost of each professional sports event and concert ticket in Atlanta.
Wait a minute. I know this is the Sports section, not News & Views, but what has me scratching my head is the idea that the City of Atlanta would grant its corporate citizens—especially pro sports franchises, which are huge consumers of city services from water to public works and public safety resources—endless incentives and tax credits, only to look to individual citizens to cover the tab, when the chickens born of irresponsibility and malfeasance come home to roost.
DO THE MATH
In sports, as in accounting and finance, the numbers don’t lie. So let’s look at the numbers.
The Braves are by far the city’s biggest entertainment draw, at roughly $2.7 million in paid attendance for 2007. For the sake of argument, let’s say the Braves sell every one of Turner Field’s 50,096 seats for every one of their 81 home games. That’s 4,057,776 tickets sold. Next we have the Atlanta Hawks. I have no idea what the Hawks’ annual attendance figures look like, but as with the Braves, let’s imagine the Hawks were to sell out every one of their 41 home games, times the 18,750 available seats at Philips Arena. The total number of tickets sold would be 768,750. Ditto the Thrashers, who also play 41 home games in Philips Arena.
Last but not least, the Atlanta Falcons: If the Dirty Birds sell out all eight of their regular season games and both preseason games (10 is a nice round number for multiplication), this adds another 712,500 to the mix. The bottom line—wait! Stop the presses. I forgot the WNBA’s fledgling Atlanta Dream, who play in a modified Philips Arena. What was I thinking? If the Dream sells all 10,000 seats for their 17 home games (bringing a whole new meaning to the word “dream”), the grand total for professional sports tickets sold in Atlanta would be 6,477,776.
And let us not forget that the entertainment tax would be levied on Atlanta music aficionados, too. Just to make the math a little easier, let’s say 522,224 fans buy tickets to shows at Philips, Lakewood Amphitheatre, Chastain Park, the Fox Theatre, etc. This brings the grand total of people seeking to be “entertained” in the city of Atlanta (or indentured servants to be exploited by the likes of Jim Maddox) to a total of 7 million.
Now, I never can remember which side of the brain is the math side and which is the creative side, but one need not be Albert Einstein to figure out that 7 million times $1 = $7 million. Excellent idea, Councilman Maddox! By your plan, we’ll be out of hock in only 20 years!
Of course, it seems to me the mayor firing the Chief Financial Officer, and then resigning herself, might be a good place to start. Come to think of it, I have a better idea. Why not assess the value of each seat at the various sports/concert venues throughout the city? That’s what the city plans to do with homeowners.
Who cares if the Braves or Hawks or Thrashers sell every ticket? Tax them either way. As I said, Turner Field, Philips Arena and the Georgia Dome certainly produce a much larger financial footprint (services consumed) than you or I could ever dream of.
JUST TAX THE ATHLETES
Better yet, why not take the 140 top-paid professional athletes and entertainers who come to Atlanta between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31 each year, in an effort to eke out a living playing games or entertaining Atlantans, plying their trades in venues built and maintained (in part) by taxpayers, and charge them each $1 million for a “business license?”
I don’t believe the government should punish those who succeed in the effort to build wealth (and reward incompetence and failure). So let’s double the number of successful people we need to shake down, and reduce the entertainer tax by half. That would mean we’d need to extort $500,000 from the top 280 entertainers and athletes who pass through Atlanta each year. Let’s face it; $500,000 is chump change for Matt Ryan (or a bad night at the casino for Charles Barkley). SP