Sports teams win at playing hardball politics

Even sports fans should be troubled by the staggering amount of cash the San Francisco 49ers dumped into local politics this election cycle.

According to state records, the Santa Clara-based NFL team led by the billionaire York family dropped nearly $4.6 million into that city’s elections. Current City Council member and mayoral candidate Anthony Becker’s campaign received $2.4 million while Council Members Raj Chahal and Karen Hardy campaigns each received over $1 million. Chahal outspent his challengers 43-to-1 and Hardy outspent her opponents 38to-1.

Those are huge amounts for a city election in which donations to the incumbent mayor’s campaign totaled about $321,000.

Why were the 49ers so heavily invested in the outcome of the election? Many believe that this investment was meant to ensure amenable politicians will allow the team to do as it pleases. Public records show that all three candidates the team supported, as well as two other current City Council members, met regularly in private with 49ers’ executives in the first eight months of 2021. Then in August of last year, all five of those members voted to fire the city attorney, Brian Doyle, who the 49ers wanted “gone,” according to City Council Member Sudhanshu Jain.

Last month, a civil grand jury strongly rebuked the five council members for putting “the 49ers’ interests ahead of the city’s interests,” alleging the council majority had “effectively breached its duties to the City.”

Although the results of the election have not yet been finalized, the situation is unsettling. The idea that a football team could have such sway on who will make laws that govern all city residents is at a minimum undemocratic. Even if you were going to throw your support behind Becker, Chahal or Hardy, it would be understandable if you questioned whether their loyalty was to the public or the NFL franchise.

Santa Clara isn’t the only city with a sports team that has raised questions about money and influence. Many teams across the country have leveraged their power to extract exorbitant amounts of taxpayer dollars.

For instance, the Atlanta Falcons’ Mercedes-Benz Stadium cost taxpayers hundreds of millions more than initially expected due to a clause that was, as the Guardian put it, “buried deep in the stadium agreement”; in 2013, team owner Arthur Blank asked for $200 million in state hotel tax money to fund the facility’s construction. But the clause stated that any money collected after this initial amount would go toward a “waterfall fund” that would help the stadium’s “maintenance, operation and improvement.” That has amounted to $700 million more. (Forbes estimates that Blank — who is the co-founder of Home Depot — has a net worth of $7.9 billion.)

Taxpayers have even been deprived of using stadiums they helped build. Earlier this year, Cincinnati Bengals fans were not able to watch the Super Bowl at the team’s Paul Brown Stadium. The NFL turned down a request from Hamilton County officials to host a viewing party in the stadium, citing legal and logistical barriers. The decision was particularly galling, considering that taxpayers had already spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the facility. California recently saw how taxpayer money finds its way to sports teams. The 2021-22 state budget included nearly $280 million that had a stated purpose of helping the Port of Oakland make “improvements that facilitate enhanced freight and passenger access and to promote the efficient and safe movement of goods and people.”

However, when the Port Commission named and approved specific projects for the money, it revealed where the cash would be actually spent: a new stadium for the Oakland A’s baseball team. (The team’s owner — John Fisher, son of the founders of clothing brand Gap Inc. — has a net worth of $2.4 billion, according to Forbes.)

“It’s just a tiny fraction of a 2021-22 state budget that approached $300 billion but would have been enough to build affordable housing for more than 500 low- and moderate-income families,” wrote Dan Walters of CalMatters.

When making appeals to local politicians for funding to construct stadiums, teams often suggest that the facilities are investments that will bring economic benefits to cities. But an analysis published earlier this year found that over a period of three decades, the amount of local economic benefit yielded from stadiums does not offset the public financial investment. The study concluded that “large subsidies commonly devoted to constructing professional sports venues are not justified as worthwhile public investments.”

Yet, the money appears likely to keep flowing, because teams have local politicians in a chokehold. They are redoubtable adversaries due to their money, influence, and because let’s face it, fans freaking love their teams. Sports teams and owners compete to have the newest, most tricked-out behemoth arena in the nation. But who wins in this race? It doesn’t seem like the taxpayers who helped construct many of them do.

Sporting events can be very fun. But as outsized donations from teams and their billionaire owners continue to flow into our local elections, we must ask ourselves: Are we accepting plutocracy for a pigskin?