The True Cost of Relocation: A Stadium Economics Analysis

Stadium deals are sold as "partnerships" and "investments." The language makes voters feel like they're getting something. They're not.

By Dear Kevin Warren · 2026-01-21

Stadium deals are sold as "partnerships" and "investments." The language makes voters feel like they're getting something. They're not.

This paper examines three aspects of stadium economics that proponents work hard to obscure: how financing really works, what "privately financed" actually means, and what else the money could do. The academic consensus is unusually clear. Peer-reviewed studies going back to the 1980s have reached the same conclusion: public stadium subsidies don't generate the economic returns their backers promise.[^1]

The data isn't complicated. The politics are.

Part I: Stadium financing models

The G-4 loan program

The NFL operates a financing program called G-4, which allows teams to borrow up to $350 million from the league at below-market interest rates.[^2] Sounds like private financing. It isn't.

Here's what actually happens: the NFL lends money to the team. The team pays it back through visiting team ticket revenue — money that would otherwise go to other NFL owners. It's a circular arrangement where the league subsidizes itself.

The G-4 program exists because the NFL knows teams can't always squeeze enough public money out of their cities. Rather than watch franchises become less valuable, the league fills the gap. The loan reduces the owner's personal risk while maintaining franchise values across the league.

When the Bears talk about "private financing," the G-4 program will likely be part of it. That's not Stan Kroenke writing a personal check. That's NFL money, which ultimately comes from ticket sales, TV contracts, and merchandising — all of which benefit from the monopoly position the league maintains.

Personal seat licenses

Personal Seat Licenses (PSLs) are another "private financing" mechanism. Fans pay thousands of dollars — sometimes tens of thousands — for the right to buy season tickets. The money goes to the team, not the public.

Las Vegas raised $250 million through PSLs for Allegiant Stadium.[^3] Buffalo expects to raise significant PSL revenue for their new stadium. The Bears would likely pursue similar arrangements.

PSLs are a wealth transfer from fans to owners. Fans who already buy tickets now pay twice — once for the PSL, once for the seats. The money doesn't come from corporate sponsors or outside investment. It comes from the same local economy that stadium proponents claim will benefit from the project.

If you bought $15,000 in PSLs, that's $15,000 you didn't spend at local businesses, didn't invest in your retirement, didn't use for your kids' college. The money didn't materialize from nowhere. It came from you.

Tax-exempt municipal bonds

Here's where the shell game gets interesting.

Before 2017, teams could finance stadiums through tax-exempt municipal bonds — bonds where investors don't pay federal income tax on the interest. Because the interest is tax-free, investors accept lower rates. Lower rates mean cheaper financing.

The catch: tax-exempt bonds cost the federal government money. When investors pay less tax, the Treasury collects less revenue. A Brookings Institution study found that federal taxpayers lost approximately $3.2 billion in revenue from stadium-related tax-exempt bonds between 2000 and 2016.[^4]

The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act eliminated this loophole for stadiums. But existing bonds were grandfathered in, and teams have found workarounds — structures where public entities technically own the stadium but teams control all revenue.

When cities issue bonds for "infrastructure" rather than "stadiums," they can sometimes still access tax-advantaged financing. Watch for this in any Chicago deal. If the state issues bonds for roads and transit serving a stadium, federal taxpayers across the country help foot the bill.

The infrastructure shuffle

The Bears' Arlington Heights proposal separated "stadium costs" from "infrastructure costs." The stadium would be "privately financed." The infrastructure — $855 million in roads, utilities, and transit — would be public.

This distinction is artificial.[^5]

If the infrastructure exists because of the stadium, it's stadium funding. The highway interchange, the new Metra station, the utility connections — none of these would be built if the Bears weren't building there. Calling it "infrastructure" instead of "stadium subsidy" doesn't change what it is.

Every modern stadium deal uses this framing. Teams learned that voters resist "stadium subsidies" but accept "infrastructure investment." The money comes from the same place. It serves the same purpose. The label is marketing.

Part II: What "privately financed" actually means

The SoFi standard

SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California cost $5.5 billion.[^6] Stan Kroenke paid for it himself. No public subsidy. No tax-exempt bonds. No government-funded infrastructure (though some road improvements followed).

This proves something stadium proponents don't want discussed: private financing is possible. A wealthy owner can fund a stadium without taxpayer help. Kroenke did it. The Wilf family could have done it in Minnesota but chose not to. The McCaskeys could pursue full private financing but won't.

Why won't they? Because they don't have to. The political system allows them to extract public money. If you could get someone else to pay for your new house, would you pay yourself?

The McCaskeys aren't as wealthy as Kroenke. Forbes estimates the family's net worth at roughly $2 billion, most of it tied up in the Bears franchise itself.[^7] A fully private stadium would require significant debt, potentially selling minority stakes, and accepting more financial risk.

But "not as wealthy" isn't the same as "unable." The McCaskeys could partner with outside investors. They could issue corporate bonds. They could sell a minority stake to reduce their capital requirements. Teams do this regularly.

What the McCaskeys can't do is build a stadium on someone else's land, with someone else's money, and keep all the profits. That's what they're asking for.

The jobs argument

Every stadium proposal promises jobs. The numbers sound impressive: 10,000 construction jobs! 5,000 permanent jobs! Economic activity!

Let's break this down.

Construction jobs are real, but temporary. Building a stadium takes 3-4 years. Then the workers need new projects. The same $2 billion in transit, housing, or road work would create similar construction employment. Stadiums don't generate construction jobs; they redirect construction labor from other projects.

Stadium operations jobs are mostly part-time, seasonal, and low-wage. Concession workers, ushers, parking attendants — these positions exist for 10-12 Sundays per year, maybe another 10-15 events. The average stadium worker earns less than $20,000 annually from stadium work.[^8]

Then there's the substitution problem. When a family spends $500 at a Bears game, they have $500 less to spend at restaurants, movies, and shops. Stadium spending doesn't add to local economic activity; it moves money around. Studies consistently find that new stadiums don't increase local economic output. They just change where existing dollars get spent.[^9]

Roger Noll, a Stanford economist who has studied stadium economics for decades, put it bluntly: "The local economic impact of a new sports facility is about the same as that of a moderately large department store."[^10]

The economic impact con

Team-commissioned economic impact studies use methodologies that academic economists reject.[^11]

The problems are consistent.

Impact studies claim that every dollar spent at a stadium generates $2-3 in additional economic activity through "multiplier effects." Real multipliers for entertainment spending are closer to 1.0-1.2. Money doesn't replicate just because it passes through a stadium.

Impact studies count gross spending — all money spent at the stadium — without subtracting what would have been spent anyway, what visitors might have spent on other local activities, or what residents spend less of elsewhere. Net impact is far smaller than gross.

When a fan drives to the stadium, buys a hot dog, and parks, impact studies count the gas, the hot dog, and the parking as three separate "impacts." But it's one fan, one trip, one pot of discretionary income.

Much stadium spending leaves town anyway. Players' salaries go to athletes who live in Arizona or Florida during the offseason. Corporate suites get bought by companies headquartered elsewhere. Merchandise is made overseas. The money doesn't stay local.

Victor Matheson of the College of the Holy Cross has reviewed dozens of team-funded impact studies. His conclusion: "If economic impact studies were held to the same standards as other research, most would never pass peer review."[^12]

Why the numbers never add up

Here's a simple test: if stadium subsidies generated the returns teams promise, cities with new stadiums would outperform economically. Their tax revenues would surge. Their unemployment would drop. Their growth would accelerate.

This has never happened.

Dennis Coates and Brad Humphreys examined the economic performance of cities before and after building new stadiums. Their finding: "The presence of professional sports franchises and stadiums and arenas has no statistically significant positive effect on the growth rate of real per capita income in any specification."[^13]

Cities with new stadiums don't grow faster than cities without them.

The St. Louis Rams left for Los Angeles in 2016. According to stadium logic, St. Louis should have suffered economic decline. It didn't. The local economy continued growing at roughly the same rate as before.[^14]

Oakland lost both the Raiders and the Warriors in recent years. Economic collapse? No. The Bay Area economy kept humming.

If stadiums were economic engines, their departure would cause recessions. It doesn't. Stadiums aren't economic engines. They're entertainment venues that redistribute existing spending.

Part III: What else the money could do

The $2 billion question

The Bears' various proposals have asked for between $855 million and $2.4 billion in public funds. Round it to $2 billion. What else could that buy?

The CTA's 2024 Capital Plan identified $28 billion in unfunded needs over the next decade.[^15] Two billion could fund rail extensions, station repairs, and new buses that would serve millions of riders for decades. Unlike stadiums, transit investments actually generate economic returns. The American Public Transportation Association puts it at roughly $5 back for every $1 invested.[^16] People get to work faster. Businesses tap bigger labor pools. Property values rise near stations.

Chicago Public Schools face chronic underfunding. Two billion could build dozens of new schools, fix crumbling facilities, hire teachers. James Heckman's research at the University of Chicago found that every dollar in early childhood education returns $4-9 through higher lifetime earnings, lower incarceration rates, and reduced need for social services.[^17] Nobody's made a comparable case for a football stadium.

Chicago's housing crisis keeps getting worse. Two billion could fund 15,000-20,000 affordable housing units.[^18] That's 15,000-20,000 families with stable housing. The construction creates jobs too, same as stadium proponents love to tout, except it also solves an actual problem.

Illinois has over 2,300 bridges rated structurally deficient.[^19] Water mains are failing. Roads need repair. Two billion could fix things that are actually broken, instead of building new roads to a stadium that benefits one family.

Why bad deals keep happening

If the economics are this clear, why do stadium deals keep getting approved?

The answer isn't economics. It's politics.

Benefits concentrate; costs spread out. Stadium owners gain billions. Individual taxpayers lose $167 each (if you spread $2 billion across Illinois's 12 million residents). That's annoying but not enough to make people organize. The McCaskeys stand to gain an asset worth billions. Guess who's doing more lobbying.

Politicians serve short terms. Stadium construction takes 3-4 years. The ribbon-cutting happens before the next election. The bond payments continue for 30 years, long after everyone who approved them is out of office or dead.

Relocation threats work because they're scary. When teams threaten to leave, politicians face an ugly choice: approve the subsidy, or become "the person who lost our team." Nobody wants to be that person. The threat doesn't need to be credible. It just needs to make politicians nervous.

Sports passion isn't rational. People love their teams. That love provides cover for economically stupid decisions. Tell Bears fans that subsidies are bad policy and it sounds like you're saying the Bears don't matter. The conversation shifts from economics to emotions.

The Buckner test

Illinois State Representative Kam Buckner proposed something interesting: make the Bears put skin in the game.[^20]

His measure would let the Bears borrow public money at favorable rates, but only if they could prove they delivered the economic impact they promised. Hit your numbers, keep the cheap financing. Miss the targets, pay market-rate interest on the difference.

The Bears never responded. Kevin Warren ducked the question.

Think about that. If the Bears actually believed their own projections, Buckner's deal would be free money. Zero risk if you're right. Standard interest if you're wrong. Any team confident in its numbers would take that deal immediately.

They didn't. They couldn't. Because they know the numbers are fiction.

What we know

Stadium economics isn't complicated. A high school economics student could summarize it:

Stadium subsidies don't generate net economic benefits. Economists don't dispute this. The evidence accumulated over 40 years points one direction.

"Private financing" rarely is. G-4 loans, PSLs, tax-advantaged bonds, infrastructure spending — all of it shifts costs from owners to the public. The labels change. The money still comes from taxpayers and fans.

Opportunity cost matters. Every dollar for a stadium is a dollar not spent on transit, schools, housing, or bridges. Those investments have documented returns. Stadium subsidies don't.

The political system favors owners. Benefits concentrate, costs disperse, politicians think short-term, fans think with their hearts. Bad deals keep getting approved because the incentives push that direction.

The Bears want public money. They're running the same playbook Kevin Warren used in Minnesota: multiple sites (Soldier Field, Arlington Heights, Indiana), relocation threats, "infrastructure" framing, economic projections that fall apart under scrutiny.[^21]

None of this is new. None of it is surprising.

It keeps working because voters let it. Politicians approve subsidies because constituents don't punish them for it. That pattern continues until people decide they've had enough.

The economics are settled. The question is whether Illinois voters will demand that their politicians act on the evidence.

Footnotes

[^1]: Coates, D. & Humphreys, B.R. (2008). "Do Economists Reach a Conclusion on Subsidies for Sports Franchises, Stadiums, and Mega-Events?" Econ Journal Watch, 5(3), 294-315. This meta-analysis reviewed 130+ studies on stadium economics.

[^2]: NFL G-4 Stadium Finance Program details reported in multiple sources including Sports Business Journal and documented in team financial disclosures.

[^3]: Las Vegas Stadium Authority (2017). Stadium financing documents showing PSL revenue projections for Allegiant Stadium.

[^4]: Brookings Institution (2016). "Tax-Exempt Municipal Bonds and the Financing of Professional Sports Stadiums." Report by Joseph Gyourko.

[^5]: Noll, R.G. & Zimbalist, A. (1997). "Sports, Jobs, and Taxes: The Economic Impact of Sports Teams and Stadiums." Brookings Institution Press. Chapter on infrastructure as stadium subsidy.

[^6]: SoFi Stadium cost figures from Los Angeles Times reporting and Kroenke Sports & Entertainment financial disclosures (2020).

[^7]: Forbes NFL Team Valuations (2023). McCaskey family net worth estimates.

[^8]: Bureau of Labor Statistics. Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics for entertainment and sports venues.

[^9]: Siegfried, J. & Zimbalist, A. (2000). "The Economics of Sports Facilities and Their Communities." Journal of Economic Perspectives, 14(3), 95-114.

[^10]: Noll, R.G. (1974). "Attendance and Price Setting." In Government and the Sports Business, ed. Roger Noll. Brookings Institution.

[^11]: Matheson, V.A. (2006). "The Economic Impact of Major Sporting Events." In The Business of Sports, eds. Brad Humphreys and Dennis Howard. Praeger.

[^12]: Matheson, V.A. (2009). Interview with ESPN on economic impact methodology problems.

[^13]: Coates, D. & Humphreys, B.R. (1999). "The Growth Effects of Sport Franchises, Stadia, and Arenas." Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 18(4), 601-624.

[^14]: St. Louis Regional Chamber economic reports (2016-2020) showing continued regional growth post-Rams departure.

[^15]: Chicago Transit Authority. 2024 Capital Improvement Program budget documents.

[^16]: American Public Transportation Association (2020). "Economic Impact of Public Transportation Investment." Policy brief on transit ROI.

[^17]: Heckman, J.J. (2006). "Skill Formation and the Economics of Investing in Disadvantaged Children." Science, 312(5782), 1900-1902. Research on early childhood education returns.

[^18]: Chicago Housing Authority cost estimates for affordable housing construction.

[^19]: Illinois Department of Transportation (2023). Annual bridge inspection reports and infrastructure condition assessments.

[^20]: Illinois General Assembly (2024). HB4824 sponsor remarks and Bears organization response (or lack thereof).

[^21]: Warren's Minnesota stadium tactics documented in Minneapolis Star Tribune reporting (2012-2016) and NFL stadium financing coverage.

Sources

Primary Academic Sources

- Coates, D. & Humphreys, B.R. "Do Economists Reach a Conclusion on Subsidies for Sports Franchises, Stadiums, and Mega-Events?" (2008) - Siegfried, J. & Zimbalist, A. "The Economics of Sports Facilities and Their Communities." (2000) - Noll, R.G. & Zimbalist, A. "Sports, Jobs, and Taxes." Brookings Institution Press (1997) - Matheson, V.A. "The Economic Impact of Major Sporting Events." (2006) - Heckman, J.J. "Skill Formation and the Economics of Investing in Disadvantaged Children." (2006)

Government and Institutional Reports

- Brookings Institution stadium financing reports - Chicago Transit Authority capital budget documents - Illinois Department of Transportation infrastructure assessments - Bureau of Labor Statistics occupational data

Journalism and Context

- Chicago Tribune Bears stadium coverage - Minneapolis Star Tribune Vikings stadium archives - Sports Business Journal NFL financing coverage - Forbes NFL franchise valuations