Who Pays, Who Profits

There's a simple question at the heart of every stadium debate.

By Dear Kevin Warren · 2026-01-21

There's a simple question at the heart of every stadium debate.

Who pays? Who profits?

Once you answer honestly, the rest is just noise.

Who Pays

Taxpayers pay.

Whether it's labeled "stadium funding" or "infrastructure investment" or "economic development," the money comes from the same place: taxes. Income taxes, sales taxes, hotel taxes, property taxes — all from regular people who live and work in Illinois.

The Bears' proposals have asked for between $850 million and $2.4 billion in public funding. Not corporate money. Not NFL money. Your money.

Let's put $2 billion in perspective:

- $2 billion is roughly what Illinois spends on higher education in a year - $2 billion could fund thousands of teachers, nurses, and first responders for a decade - $2 billion could repair hundreds of bridges and miles of roads that actually need fixing - $2 billion could transform public transit access across the Chicago metro area

When someone asks you to support public funding for a stadium, they're asking you to choose that stadium over those other things.

Who Profits

The McCaskey family profits.

The Bears are worth about $6 billion, according to Forbes. The McCaskey family owns the team. Every dollar of franchise value appreciation goes to them — not to fans, not to taxpayers, not to the city.

When public money goes into a stadium, it doesn't come back to the public. It becomes embedded in franchise value. The McCaskeys get richer. The team gets sold someday (or passed to the next generation) at an inflated price. Public subsidy captured as private wealth.

The NFL profits.

The National Football League is a cartel of 32 teams that agreed not to compete with each other. This artificial scarcity — only 32 teams, no more — creates the leverage for stadium deals.

If cities could start their own NFL teams, or if new leagues could genuinely compete, the leverage would evaporate. Teams couldn't threaten to move. There would always be alternatives.

But there aren't alternatives. The NFL maintains its monopoly, and every stadium deal enriches the monopoly.

Players and executives profit.

Money flowing into NFL teams gets split between ownership and labor. Star players make tens of millions. Executives like Kevin Warren make millions. The high-revenue environment that public stadiums create drives those salaries higher.

Nothing wrong with players and executives making money. But they're not taxpayers' employees. Taxpayers shouldn't be subsidizing their salaries.

Who Doesn't Profit

Taxpayers don't profit.

Over 130 academic papers show that stadium subsidies don't return their cost to the public. Promised jobs don't materialize at the scale claimed. Economic impact studies are funded by teams and use inflated multipliers. Tax revenue projections never pan out.

Roger Noll of Stanford: "The local economic impact of a new sports facility is about the same as that of a moderately large department store or shopping center."

Andrew Zimbalist of Smith College: "No stadium ever achieved the economic impact claimed by boosters."

Victor Matheson of Holy Cross: "Promised impacts are 10-20 times actual results."

Brookings Institution: "A new sports facility has an extremely small (perhaps even negative) effect on overall economic activity and employment."

Taxpayers pay billions. Taxpayers get... a stadium nearby.

Workers don't profit the way they're promised.

Stadium boosters love to talk about jobs. Thousands of construction jobs! Thousands of game-day jobs! Economic activity!

What they don't tell you:

- Construction jobs are temporary (build the stadium, job ends) - Game-day jobs are part-time (10 Sundays a year, maybe a few concerts) - Most "economic impact" is substitution (money spent at the stadium is money not spent elsewhere) - Stadium jobs tend to be low-wage without benefits

The permanent, well-paying jobs stadium boosters imply? Mostly for team executives, not local workers.

The Shell Game

Watch how the money gets discussed:

"The Bears will privately finance the stadium itself."

Translation: We're only asking for $855 million in public money for "infrastructure."

"This investment will generate $10 billion in economic impact."

Translation: Our consultants used fantasy multipliers to generate a big number.

"World-class events will come to Chicago."

Translation: We might host a Super Bowl once every 20 years, like Minneapolis.

"Thousands of union jobs will be created."

Translation: Temporary construction jobs, then part-time game-day work.

Every claim obscures the fundamental transaction: public money going to private wealth.

The Opportunity Cost

What gets lost in every stadium debate: what else could the money do?

Illinois faces real problems. Chicago faces real problems. The money being discussed for stadium subsidies could address those problems.

CTA and Metra need billions in capital investment. Better transit makes the whole region more productive and livable. Unlike stadiums, transit investments actually generate real economic returns.

Illinois schools, particularly in lower-income areas, are underfunded. $2 billion in education investment would affect hundreds of thousands of children.

Chicago faces an affordable housing crisis. Public investment in housing creates construction jobs AND addresses a genuine need.

And actual infrastructure — bridges that need repair, roads that need maintenance, water systems that need upgrading. Not "stadium infrastructure."

When politicians approve stadium subsidies, they say no to all these alternatives. The money doesn't exist in a vacuum. Every dollar for the stadium is a dollar not spent elsewhere.

The Kam Buckner Test

Illinois Representative Kam Buckner proposed something interesting: let the Bears prove their economic impact claims.

His measure would let the Bears borrow public money at zero interest — if they could prove they delivered the economic impact they promised. If they didn't hit the numbers, they'd owe interest.

Kevin Warren and the Bears never responded. Avoided it entirely.

Ask yourself: if the Bears really believed their economic impact claims, why wouldn't they take that deal? Free money if you're right. Interest only if you're wrong.

The silence tells you everything. The Bears don't believe their own numbers.

What the Research Actually Shows

Decades of research have produced a clear consensus: stadium subsidies don't pay off.

Not "might not pay off." Not "sometimes don't pay off." DON'T pay off. Reliably. Consistently. Across dozens of cities and deals.

The reasons are straightforward:

1. Substitution: Money spent at stadiums is mostly money that would have been spent elsewhere locally. It's not new economic activity.

2. Leakage: Much of the money spent at stadiums leaves the local economy — players don't live in Chicago, corporations aren't locally owned.

3. Opportunity cost: Alternative investments (transit, schools, housing) generate better returns.

4. Inflated projections: Team-funded studies use methodologies that real economists reject.

This isn't controversial among economists. As close to consensus as economics gets.

The Real Transaction

Strip away the rhetoric:

- A billionaire family wants a new building - They want the public to pay for much of it - They'll keep all the profits - If you don't pay, they threaten to leave - They call this a "partnership"

That's not a partnership. That's leverage.

A real partnership would involve the public getting genuine return on investment — equity stakes, profit sharing, meaningful revenue participation. That's not on the table.

What's on the table is: give us money, trust our projections, and hope it works out.

The Bottom Line

Who pays? You do. Taxpayers do. The public does.

Who profits? The McCaskeys do. The NFL does. The executives do.

Not complicated. Not hidden. Just how stadium deals work.

The question is whether Illinois politicians will say yes anyway — and whether voters will let them.