Bring baseball to Raleigh without a taxpayer check

On June 20, 180,000 Carolina Hurricanes fans flooded downtown Raleigh for the team’s Stanley Cup parade and rally. Fans packed sidewalks, leaned from office windows, lined parking decks, and turned Fayetteville Street into a sea of red. The crowd was so large that Raleigh officials revised their estimate upward, and so loud that even coach Rod Brind’Amour said he was “speechless.”

That celebration was deserved. The Carolina Hurricanes’ 2026 Stanley Cup victory sent a surge of pride through the Triangle and across North Carolina. It proved once again that this state can passionately support a successful major professional sports franchise.

But a championship parade is not an economic development strategy. And civic pride is not a blank check.

Recent reporting indicates that some legislative leaders are considering using public dollars — potentially hundreds of millions from the state’s Economic Development Project Reserve, plus higher local occupancy taxes — to help fund a Major League Baseball stadium in or near Wake County.

That discussion is occurring while the General Assembly remains in session, budget negotiations drag on, and lawmakers have yet to pass a General Fund budget for this fiscal year or biennium. Before committing taxpayer money to a private sports venue, they should first finish the core work North Carolinians sent them to Raleigh to do.

Securing a new MLB franchise and building a stadium would cost at least $4 billion, a price tag that belongs with private investors, not taxpayers. Professional sports are big business, backed by sophisticated billionaires and investors. If the market for Raleigh baseball is strong, the private sector should fund it. Taxpayers should not be asked to underwrite it.

Proponents claim a stadium will spark economic growth by attracting fans, drawing restaurants and apartments, and generating tax revenue. But this story ignores the key question: What would those dollars have done otherwise? A night at the ballpark doesn’t appear from thin air. For most fans, it simply displaces other spending. The new spending is highly visible. The lost spending elsewhere is not. Both are real.

A 2023 policy review by Kennesaw State University economist JC Bradbury and two co-authors makes the point plainly: Stadiums do not create prosperity simply by concentrating spending in one place. Most fan spending comes from local residents shifting dollars they would have spent elsewhere — on restaurants, concerts, youth sports, movies, or other entertainment — rather than from new economic activity.

A baseball stadium does not give Raleigh residents or visitors more disposable income. It simply gives them another place to spend the same entertainment dollars. That is why promised “economic impact” figures so often fall short. A stadium may benefit a few nearby restaurants and bars, but narrow gains around the ballpark are not the same as broad growth for the city or state.

North Carolina should not subsidize one entertainment district by pulling customers away from other local businesses.

Financing gimmicks don’t change the math. Whether the subsidy arrives as a direct appropriation, “infrastructure,” an occupancy tax, or a land deal, Bradbury and his co-authors call these mechanisms “fiscal illusion.” Bonds, direct subsidies, and the sale or donation of public land are still public costs. “Not from the General Fund” doesn’t mean “not from taxpayers.”

As the nonpartisan Tax Foundation has documented, state and local governments devoted $33 billion in public funds to major-league stadiums and arenas in the United States and Canada from 1970 to 2020. Among venues that received public funding, the median public contribution covered 73% of construction costs. In plain English, taxpayers have often been asked to pick up most of the tab, while private owners capture the most direct benefits.

Sports teams create real civic pride, and the Hurricanes’ Stanley Cup run proved that. But pride is not a blank check. The question is not whether sports have value, but whether that value justifies spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars on a private business. The evidence says no.

Supporters may argue that subsidies are the price of admission because other cities offer them. But “everybody’s doing it” is not a compelling argument from a teenager, and it is not a compelling argument from lawmakers. North Carolina should not measure its ambition by how much public money it is willing to hand to team owners. It should compete on its real strengths: a low-tax climate, a growing workforce, solid infrastructure, and economic freedom.

There is also a basic fairness issue. Most North Carolinians will rarely, if ever, attend a Major League Baseball game in Raleigh, yet statewide taxpayers would be asked to subsidize a project whose biggest benefits flow to team owners, developers, and a narrow slice of fans. That is not responsible budgeting. It is corporate welfare with a seventh-inning stretch.

Lawmakers don’t need to oppose MLB to protect taxpayers. They can streamline permitting, improve infrastructure, maintain low taxes, and cheer for a strong private bid. But public investments that serve broad needs are different from stadium-specific subsidies for a private franchise.

If Raleigh is a true major-league market, it should attract major-league private investment. Let owners own the risk, let fans buy the tickets, and let North Carolina taxpayers keep their money. North Carolina can be proud enough to pursue big dreams and disciplined enough to know which ones government shouldn’t fund.

“Bring baseball to Raleigh without a taxpayer check” was originally published on www.carolinajournal.com.