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And now for some consequence
(by Dave Lange - July 14, 2010)
COUNTY LINE, BY DAVE LANGE
And now for some consequence
It's been a week since the sky was supposed to fall on Cleveland, but our championship-deprived city hasn't even fallen into our Great Lake. If the vast majority of actual scientists are right about global warming or if the drill babies keep throwing caution to the wind, Miami will be underwater or oil long before life along the Cuyahoga River goes down in flames.
Of course, the "chosen one," who couldn't win a National Basketball Association championship for himself or his hometown, won't be around when it comes time to slam dunk with a snorkle in south Florida. You'll never see his name mentioned in this space again, but he's so most valuable that he followed the lead of lesser players, rather than vice versa.
The good news is that maybe the local media will find something of consequence to fill their front pages and lead off their newscasts.
As they used to say in politics, "It's the economy, stupid." But that was before the last administration in Washington drove the country to the brink of a depression and stupidity reached a whole new level.
So even before the kid from Akron wearing the New York Yankees baseball cap popped Chicken Little in the head with an acorn down on Gateway Plaza, the media were analyzing the dire economic consequences.
First off, they did some bean counting and came up with an average attendance in what used to be Gund Arena of about 11,500 for each home basketball game before the rising star arrived. Suddenly, they said, the place was selling out its 20,000 seats for each and every game.
Yeah, well, the Cavaliers were selling out not too many years earlier -- without a single $600 million superstar on their roster -- at the Richfield Coliseum, which didn't cost the taxpayers one red cent to build.
Furthermore, the financial wizards calculated, the fans now spend about $3.7 million per game, including tickets, obscenely overpriced food and drinks and hotel rooms. That amounts to $185 per person per game. According to their extrapolations, it all adds up to over $150 million a season.
Some Cuyahoga County sin-tax payers may recall being put in hock for $270 million back in 1990 to build the new arena and baseball stadium downtown, only to learn later that the add-on costs would soar beyond anybody's imagination. Sports fans also may recall how the Gateway project angered the owner of Cleveland's professional football team into stealing away to Baltimore, which led to yet another new stadium built with tax money.
The taxpayers never will know how much they're really paying for these games of professional sports and voodoo economics. Suffice it to say, they'll never get a fair return on their dollars.
Then there's that little entertainment distict that has materialized around renamed Quicken Loans Arena and Progressive Field which the worry warts fear will slink away with their shooting star. Some sinners may recall a place called the Flats, where Greater Clevelanders were happy to spend their entertainment dollars for many years before Gateway arrived to steal the spotlight.
And that leads to the final economics lesson of the day. People with money to spend on fun and frivolity will find places to do just that. If they don't blow it on basketball games, they'll do it somewhere else.
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