Economists have long recognized that new stadiums bring almost no economic benefits to the neighborhoods and cities they’re built in. But governments haven’t received the message: since 1989, eighty major league sports stadiums have been built in the US and Canada at a total cost to taxpayers of $14 billion. Only eight of those stadiums did not receive public funds. 

In "Stadium Status" Internets Celebrities‘ Dallas Penn and Rafi Kam speak with Neil DeMause and other New Yorkers to take an incisive, hilarious look at how new taxpayer-funded stadiums in New York have damaged small businesses, displaced local residents and yet still received more than half of their funding from local and federal governments. For more on the bad math behind publicly funded stadiums, read DeMause’s article in this week’s special sports issue of The Nation.

—Kevin Donohoe